


[Israfel's Heirs] Hunter's Web

by Corvidian



Category: Vampire: The Requiem
Genre: Original Fiction, Queensport (Original Setting), RPG Fic, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-15 14:43:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18671770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvidian/pseuds/Corvidian
Summary: In Queensport, a decaying New England seaport, the night is ruled by the monstrous vampire Malcolm, and his mortal and immortal family. He offers refuge to exiles and fugitives from other vampire domains in exchange for loyalty and obedience, but his will is an iron law, enforced by the labyrinthine conspiracies he and his kin have spun throughout the city for centuries, and by the savage brutality of his Hound, the half-mad and inhuman Spider.But now, Spider finds traces of new vampires in the night, unclaimed and unannounced. Invaders? Spies from a neighboring realm? Frightened innocents? It does not matter. Spider will find them, and tear the truth from their screaming flesh.[This is based on events from a Vampire: the Requiem campaign I ran for my crew for about seven years. Told from the perspective of one of the major NPCs, it’s his view of the characters intro to the world. All VtR trademarks and IP and such belong to White Wolf, natch.]





	1. Masks and Shadows

He can feel them in the city, long before Maggarian’s nervous voice calls him down from the rooftops. For the last century and a half, he‘s been watching the mortals from atop these buildings; the warm smell of their blood rising like steam, the soft thunder of their hearts surrounding him like the buzzing of a swarm of bees. When another hunter moves among them, the herd responds and he hears it. The sudden shift as the humans react, their fears echoing off each other; the sound of the whole changes and he can follow it, tracking the interlopers by the ripples they make in the sea of flesh. He cannot describe it in words, but words were never his chosen tool.

It is mid-autumn now, and the city seems more frantic than usual. It’s not just the new hunters that drive these jitters; the herd feels something else in the night around them, and he feels it too. Something deeper. Older and darker, and strangely familiar. He has felt this darkness before, but he shies away from those memories. The void that they lead to still pulls at him. Only his duty to the family, the city and Malcolm keeps him from that void, the collar that holds him to this endless patrol and prevents him from sinking again into that comfortable emptiness, vacant of anything but hunger, hate and fear.

But the new ones, they are a quarry he can sink his fangs into. Intruders hold no fear for him. If they are here as refugees then he will take them to Malcolm to be welcomed and warned or denied and slain. If they are here to test Malcolm’s defenses, they will find only death at his hands and teeth, as so many before them have done. Sudden, silent death and he are old friends.

He crouches atop a vacant warehouse near the docks, watching the humans below him stumble into and out of the nameless bars that dull their minds and senses. Born prey, these drifters and sailors, drunks and travelers. Perhaps later tonight he will return and feed off one of them, after his search is done. A sudden drop, a swift blow and a rapid yank into the shadows of an alley, and then a refreshing hot gush of blood to quench his thirst. Malcolm prefers him to feed from the family, but the taste of the family’s blood has grown stale to him. As stale, in some ways, as his endless duty. The red blood of the street, hunted and claimed by strength, is far sweeter than the pallid gruel that the family offers, wrung from them by custom and careful prudence.

From the alley below him, a timid voice calls.

“Spider? I have news, Spider...” Maggarian’s voice is as soft as his pale flesh, dripping with the caution that keeps him to the shadows of basements and alleys. No violent hunting for Maggarian; he prefers to scavenge his meals from the veins of sleeping bums and drunken sailors. His prey never knows he was there. So quiet and hidden has he become that he is nearly invisible, the cloak of Maggarian’s fear drawn so tight about himself that it clouds even Spider’s keen eyes.

He drops four stories to the alley floor, landing noiselessly beside Maggarian. Maggarian cringes away from him, but controls himself and begins to speak.

“Th-there’s new vamps in town, Spider. I seen ‘ema couple of times, out on the street. Man and a woman, and somebody else. Haven’t got a good look at that one yet. They got a van; I think it’s the guy’s van-” Maggarian’s whispers spill from his plump lips in a fearful spray; were he not already dead, he’d be sweating. As it is, he simply oozes dampness and cowardice. Spider despises him.

“-I think the guy’s from around here, though, I seen the van before, I think. He wasn’t a vamp before, though, I think, I think I seen _him_ before too, y’know, in the van. I dunno, I mighta fed off him once or twice before, if it’s the guy I think it is. I need to get a closer look at him to be sure-” But he has his uses. For that matter, Spider despises them all, all the other vampires that hide in the city. Malcolm has continued their sire’s policy of welcoming refugees into their city, and Spider grudgingly refrains from slaughtering them on sight. But he is Malcolm’s Hound, the sword that enforces Malcolm’s laws and defends the city from those who would take it from him. This would not be the first time some ambitious vampire has attempted to infiltrate the city and undermine Malcolm’s rule. If that is what this is, then these new vampires will meet the same fate that all their predecessors have met; a swift death at Spider’s hand.

Maggarian continues to babble. “-the girl’s a looker, from what I seen. I think she’s from around here too, an’ that means they was Embraced here, don’t it? The Boss ain’t let nobody embrace nobody in a while, has he? Not since before my time, is what Simon says. Not that I’m pryin’, I’m just sayin’, it’s what Simon says an’ he’s been here longer than me-”

Spider lets the plump fool chatter on as he crouches in the darkness of the alley, thinking. He has long since become accustomed to Maggarian’s nervous verbosity; the little coward has sheltered here for several decades, fled from some political struggle in far off New York. Spider knows little else of his past, and cares even less. The petty politics and philosophy that other vampires occupy their endless nights with is meaningless to him. His Sire is gone and he serves his Sire’s chosen successor; he kills at command and polices the scattered refugees, protecting them and the city from outsiders and from each other. There is little else left of him now. Even the welfare of the family, the tangled web of mortal influence and conspiracy that consumes Malcolm’s nights with plot and strategy, this means nothing to Spider. He carries out his orders and expects nothing more from his eternity.

Finally, he stops Maggarian short with an impatient wave. “Their lair, do you know it?” he hisses through gnarled fangs.

“N-not yet, no. I mostly seen ‘em in the van, drivin’ around and sometimes walkin’, I-I didn’t get a chance to follow ‘em last time-” Maggarian seems even more terrified now. The thought that Spider may be dissatisfied with his work is nearly melting him with fear. Spider is amused; Maggarian’s obvious panic scratches an emotional itch that he rarely acknowledges.

Spider reaches into the pocket of his loose black pants and removes a cell phone. The tiny device seems even tinier in his enormous hand as he displays the phone’s number and shows it to Maggarian. “If you see them again, call me.” In one motion, he springs four stories up, back to the rooftops, leaving Maggarian to babble his assurances to an empty alleyway. He regards the phone with faint dislike and drops it back into his pocket. He recognizes the device’s usefulness; the family brought them to Malcolm’s attention a year ago and Spider has carried one ever since. Still, he misses the freedom of running the city alone, free from any duty but the hunt. Now, the family can reach him at any time; call him to aid them in some piece of midnight violence or simply to watch over them as they execute another of Malcolm’s intricate plans. They do not call often, but the thought is always there now.

Spider scans the city street and then leaps into the night. Bounding from telephone pole to telephone pole, taking dozens of yards at a stride, he loses himself in the city.This is the only thing that calms him, this nocturnal flight. The simple act of running from building to building, hurdling streets at a bound, the salt air caressing him as he runs; this is peace. Few people in the city look upwards at night, and those that do see only a faint shadow passing overhead from time to time. The shadow of the family has lain on this city for centuries, and its mortal residents have generations of instinct and whispered folktales to keep them from looking too deeply into the shadows.

Spider runs.

 

\--------------

 

In the darkness of his chamber, Spider opens his eyes. The burning itch of daylight, far above, has passed, and soon he will be free to run again, as free as he’ll ever be. Here in the Labyrinth, Spider can feel the Master’s will behind every wall, even now. He feels Malcolm’s will here, too, a shadow of their Sire’s pervasive and inescapable dominance. Still, Malcolm prefers that he sleep here, and so he does.

Spider’s rooms are large, but sparsely furnished. On Malcolm’s command, he sleeps on a bed, but few pieces of furniture are sturdy enough to survive Spider’s periodic bursts of rage and so the family has gradually given up on replacing anything other than the bed. Recently, they presented him with a long sofa. He suspects it to be another of Malcolm’s attempts to drag him back into at least behaving like a civilized creature; he’s still not entirely sure why Malcolm bothers.

Spider rises and walks over to the lone bookcase against the far wall of his sleeping chamber. Its shelves are barely half filled; a disorganized assortment of explorers’ tales, sailors’ journals and National Geographic magazines, all scavenged from trashheaps or stolen from his prey. No-one else knows about this hoard of knowledge, except perhaps Malcolm. Spider is unsure if he watches him here, and prefers not to ask. The illusion of privacy is sometimes more important than the truth.

Spider takes a ragged volume from the shelf, a collection of photographs from some distant jungle that he will never see, and flips through it casually as he walks into the other room. His undead eyes need no external illumination, revealing his surroundings in an eerie indigo half-light that has grown more comfortable to him over the decades than true light ever was. Though the family wired these rooms nearly 60 years ago, stapling thick cables and crude fixtures to the rough stone, Spider rarely bothers to use them.

The other room is larger, which makes the sparseness of its furnishings all the more apparent. Aside from the abandoned sofa against one wall, the only other interruption is a small table, piled high with half-carved masks and blocks of wood. Scattered around the base of the table are the broken remains of finished masks atop the chips and chunks of wood left by the carving process. All the masks depict inhumanly distorted screaming faces.

A few years ago, he’d become fascinated by a local sculptor, observing him night after night tearing beauty from crude wood blocks. After months of watching the man through his skylight, he slipped in, clubbed him into unconsciousness and drank from him, wondering if he could taste the art in his blood. There was no difference. Strangely disappointed, he’d stolen a set of carving tools as he crept back out the window. The man fled the city a few nights later. Since then, Spider has attempted to replicate the process of creation he observed, demanding materials from the family and spending hours hacking at them with his stolen tools. Gradually, he has grown more skilled in their use, but none of the finished pieces have satisfied him, and he shatters them within moments of completion.

Tossing the book onto the sofa, he picks up one of the masks and studies it, frowning. This one is closer, but it is still not right. He snatches a chisel from the table, crouches down and begins to pare at the edge of the mask with the blade. Losing himself in the task, he is not sure how much later it is when the sound of footsteps in the hall outside jars him into awareness. He snarls and tosses the mask and the chisel onto the table and walks toward the door.

In the hall outside, he hears the reluctant shuffle of his visitor slow as the footsteps near his door. Spider waits until the shuffle stops, listens for the intake of breath and then slowly opens the door as his visitor freezes in mid-knock. The light from the hall barely penetrates the doorway as Spider looms in the darkness within his room.

His visitor is one of the family, dressed in the new security uniforms instead of the traditional rough cotton tunic and trousers that family members wear here in the home tunnels. One of the younger brothers, of the Blood but unChanged, his youthful appearance belies his true age. Those of the Blood live longer and age slower than humans, even before the Change halts the aging process completely. This one will likely soon go to live outside the Labyrinth, to work among the humans as an agent of the family. Most family members do, moving back into the tunnels before their agelessness begins to arouse questions. Those with a talent for it are given the Change, and will cycle between the world above and their home below several times, waiting for those who’d recognize them to die of old age before returning to the surface. This has been the family’s way for centuries, even before they’d left Tunisia more than 300 years ago.

“S-Spider, ah, Malcolm wishes to see you?” The youth swallows. “Uh, before you leave?” He steps back nervously as Spider remains within the darkened room, glaring at the boy. A sullen hiss, and then Spider ducks under the doorway and steps out into the corridor, closing the door behind him. His younger kinsman has yet to reach his full height, but even then he will remain at least a foot shorter than Spider. Now, he barely reaches the middle of Spider’s chest as he half-bows, before turning to lead the way hurriedly down the hall. Spider lopes silently behind him, crouching slightly enough to allow his elongated arms to brush the floor. A small smile darts across his face as he watches the boy’s nervous stride. In some ways, he thinks, his amusement at the minor torments and terrors he wreaks among the family are the closest he feels to humanity.

The nervous boy leads him to the smaller of Malcolm’s thronerooms, the one he uses to meet those he trusts and has no need to overawe. The Master had never seen the need for such a chamber, but Malcolm’s hand lies lighter on the necks of those he rules. The room is long, dominated by the immense wooden table and the enormous wooden throne at its head, but the furniture fades behind the terror that is Malcolm. Even to Spider, Malcolm is a figure of dominance and fear. Nearly eight feet tall, and massing close to 600 pounds, his bulk only underscores the aura of dread that surrounds him. Malcolm’s skin is grayish black, his head smooth shaven; the rest of him appears far less human but tonight is concealed by a dark brown kaftan, woven to fit his inhuman proportions by elder family members who most likely have not seen the sun in centuries. The table in front of him is piled high with papers and folders; reports from family members on the surface, notes on the intricate dealings that maintain the family’s power here in Queensport, proposals from various powerbrokers and businessmen who’ve no notion of the nature of the being that passes judgement on their schemes.

Spider closes the door behind him, leaving the boy outside. Ignoring the chairs, far too small to support him, he smoothly steps onto the end of the table, folds himself into an awkward-looking cross-legged slouch and waits. Resting his head on one overlarge hand, he watches Malcolm rifle through a folder for some vital letter or form. Spider does not envy him these endless plots and machinations. Finally, Malcolm grunts in satisfaction and slides the papers to one side.

“I’m told we have new visitors in town?” Malcolm’s voice is a sinister rumble, distorted by the unevenly gnarled fangs that fill his enormous jaws.

“Maggarian claims so. I have not seen them.”

“I dislike such surprises, especially on the heels of this new embassy from Boston’s Dragons. You have been monitoring them?”

Spider snarls. “Treacherous worms. We have no need of their ‘services’. Such witchery comes too dear.”

Malcolm frowns and looks down at the maelstrom of paper before him. “But you have been watching them, yes?”

A short sigh, and then, “Yes. They have remained where you bid them, in the hotel. No more than one leaves at a time; their servants travel by day and that pup Gideon accompanies them. Mari and Deborah serve in the hotel and say that the female has some electrical thinking device, and they spend no small amount of money to keep it continuously connected to the telephone lines. The leader goes about town for a few hours a night, making measurements of some kind with strange devices. The other male has only been out of the rooms twice, the female, never. Their servants, Gideon says, purchase paper, maps, and books and bring them back to the rooms, but they say little. History books and such. He says they have inquired about the library, but have not gone there yet.” Spider looks down at his hands. “You know these things as well as I. Gideon and the others report to you first.”

“Simply reassuring myself that we have the same information. The leader, is he making tactical measurements of some kind?”

Spider snorts. “If he is, it is for no tactics that I understand. He visits graveyards, monuments, homes; I can make no sense of his destinations. No doubt for some Dragon sorcery.”

“Their leader, this ‘Renault’, spoke with Gideon last night. He said that his subordinate wished to make some sort of apology to one of us, for some offense he believes he may have committed. You will go and accept this apology, and discover what it is that he has done, and to whom. Meet him in the park beside the hotel at midnight.”

Spider nods and tilts an eyebrow at Malcolm. Malcolm nods and says, “That will be all for now. Go and see if you can hunt up these new visitors for me. We must make them welcome, after all.” His merciless smile is matched fang for fang by Spider’s.

“With pleasure.”

 

\------------

 

Spider lands atop the streetlight with a silent hiss of frustration. His quarry continues to elude him. And now, he must listen politely to some Bostonian fop, some Ordo Dracul sorcerer making pathetic excuses, and pretend that he does not burn to pull the fool’s limbs from his screaming corpse. Spider is not certain what it is about the Order that makes him hate them so; it is not as though he has any great affection for any of the other great alliances that unite and divide vampire society. Something about the Order and its oddly monastic scholar-scientists simply fills him with a barely controllable anger. Perhaps it is how much they remind him of the Master.

In the park below, Gideon stands beside a park bench, speaking softly to another man who sits and listens carefully. The man appears in his forties, fit looking, white, with dark hair cut close to the scalp. He sits at attention, answering Gideon in short stiff sentences. Spider’s anger fades slightly as he realizes that the man’s stiff demeanor conceals a bone-deep terror. It seems the legends of Spider the destroyer are still remembered in Boston, though it’s been decades since he last visited. Some lord or other had declared an interest in claiming Queensport and had begun sending his knights to try and displace Malcolm. Spider had wrung the location of the fool’s hidden lair from the whimpering remains of the last of the invading vampires and had dismembered the ambitious lordling before setting his limbless torso ablaze and hurling it through the window of the Prince of Boston’s favored nightspots. There have been no such attempts since.

Spider waits for a moment and then leaps from the streetlight, landing behind the bench. Resting his hands on either end of the back of the bench, he leans over the man’s head and hisses “Speak.” The man twitches, as if about to run, them masters himself. Folding his hands in his lap, he clears his throat and begins.

“I’m here to apologize for frightening one of your citizens. I was visiting the club called Blue Mary’s, delivering a message for the proprietor from Master Mihos, First among our Order in Boston. One of the dancers there was kindred, and her Beast took fright at seeing me, and she fled. I apologize for interrupting her performance, and for causing her distress. And I apologize to you and your master, for disturbing the peace of your city. How may I make amends?”

The speech sounds rehearsed to Spider; practiced words, composed by another. His forehead wrinkles in thought as he glares down at the top of the man’s head. None of the vampires under Malcolm’s protection work at Blue Mary’s. Spider doubts she would have them. The club is named after the witch who runs it, and she has done so for more than sixty years. Blue Mary is rumored to wield strange powers, and is said to sell her services to any who can meet her steep prices. The club is located on the edge of Queensport, and she and Malcolm long ago came to an arrangement concerning the status of her club among the kindred who stalk the city’s nights. No vampire hunts in her club; in exchange,she seeks no further power in the city itself and she offers her services to Malcolm if he should need them. In the time since that agreement was reached, Malcolm has never called on her.

“This ...dancer, describe her.”

The man tilts his head back and meets Spider’s eyes gingerly. “Blonde, young. Attractive. Well built. Seemed skilled enough.” He hesitates. “Ah, she left pretty quickly. Didn’t see her for long.”

Spider glares down at him and thinks. The description could match either of two residents, but neither of them are the sort to work for Mary, nor the sort she would tolerate for long. She may be one of the newcomers Spider hunts, but that is no business for this one to know of. The man does not seem to be lying; the voice he uses now feels more natural to him, clipped and precise. A momentary wave of respect dilutes Spider’s anger; the man is looking at him now without flinching. Few can say as much. The accursed Dragon has courage at least.

“On behalf of Malcolm and those under his protection, I accept your apology. I will carry it to him, and to the one you have injured. Should she wish to accept it in person, arrangements will be made.” A thought, and he adds, “You may wish to make an apology to Mary as well. She is not one to anger unnecessarily.”

The man blinks. “I, uh, I have already given my apologies to her. She accepted them. I, uh, thank you for your, ah, mercy and understanding.” Another rote phrase. Spider can hear the voice of this one’s leader in his mouth. He must have drilled him carefully. The Dragons have taken a great chance in coming to Queensport, and they will take no further chances of offending Malcolm now that he has shown his willingness to listen to their proposal.

Spider turns to Gideon and says “Bring him back to the hotel, then return. Be swift.” Gideon nods, and Spider steps into the shadow of a nearby tree. He watches the man rise with evident relief and accompany Gideon off toward the street, and then looks upward at the orange-lit clouds that hang over the city. It will rain soon. He stretches upward, seizing a branch and drawing himself up into the barren tree. He feels more comfortable perched above the ground. He always has, even long ago, when he still breathed and bled.

A few minutes later, Gideon returns. He knows Spider’s preferences well enough, and crouches below him in the darkness, waiting for him to speak. From his perch, Spider can see that Gideon’s normally scrupulously shaven head is beginning to show stubble. He’s been assigned to monitor the Dragons for nearly a week now, and the day and night-long duty is beginning to wear on him.

“Have someone inquire of Mary if she has employed any of our residents. Call me with the answer. Tonight. Go.”

Gideon nods, rises, and goes back toward the hotel, taking a phone from his suit pocket and dialing. Spider watches him, eyes narrowed speculatively. If Mary has begun employing kindred, perhaps she is planning to supplant Malcolm as protector of the city’s vampires. Perhaps he will have the opportunity to test her fabled defenses and see if witches die as easily as mortals do. He snarls in anticipation.

But first he must find Dorotea and Michelle. The snarl turns to an impatient snort. They are so tiresomely frivolous.

 

\----------

 

Above an alley behind the Wonderland club, Spider watches two blonde girls giggle and tease the muscular man who stands guard at the back door. They appear no more than 20, and with a quick glance, one would think them twins. Hair cut in identical bobs, the same expensive black dresses and elegant jewelry, makeup styled in exactly the same lines and shades; the pair have put no small effort into their masquerade. The bouncer’s words are slurred, though Spider’s inhuman senses say that he’s drunk nothing but water this night. The two girls spin webs of hinted pleasure and serpentine magnetism, and within minutes, he abandons his post and follows them into the shadows. Spider sneers as he watches them fawn over their befuddled prey, kissing and caressing him before they strike as one, sinking their teeth into both sides of his neck.

The bouncer’s head falls back and his face contorts in ecstasy, the rich scent of blood flooding Spider’s senses. The edge of the roof cracks as Spider’s hands flex hungrily, twisting the boards like paper. One of the girls has undone the man’s jeans, fondling him as she drinks; the other is sliding his wallet free of his back pocket. As the man’s eyes close and he slides free of their grasp, she flips through it swiftly, memorizing his name and address. Her partner bends down, licking the wounds on his neck closed before biting her own wrist gently open and offering him a few sips of her thick vitae. He drinks half-consciously, eyes still closed; when she pulls her wrist away, he protests feebly, pawing at her arm as she stands. The other girl bends down and kisses him as she slips his wallet back into his pants. They stride down the alley, chattering brightly as they pause to wipe the blood from their mouths and reapply each other’s lipstick. Behind them, the bouncer is limply splayed at the base of the wall, shallow breath barely moving his chest as he whispers incoherent pleas.

“-oh yes, he’ll do fine. A pity about poor Raul, but boys will be boys, Dor. You were getting tired of him anyway weren’t you?” She stops just short of the mouth of the alley, checking her slim phone and frowning in the bluish light from the screen. “Whatever is keeping that fool? He should have called half an hour ago. I think we should come up with something particularly painful for him if he keeps us waiting much more, don’t you, Dor? ...Dor?”

On the roof above her, Spider smiles cruelly at the writhing figure who hangs in his grasp, his huge hand wrapped around her neck like a dark python. Dorotea’s legs flail wildly as her hands claw at his forearm, and one of her expensive shoes slips free and falls, barely missing her companion below. Michelle’s gaze swings upwards, and she drops her phone and stumbles backward, hand rising to her mouth.

“Two questions, little bird, and speak truth, for I will know. First, have you or your cohort taken employment at Blue Mary’s?” Dorotea’s green eyes are wide with terror as she soundlessly mouths “No!” Pinkish tears trickle down her trembling cheeks, smearing her perfect mascara. At this close range, Spider can see the differences between her and her companion, artfully diminished by makeup and habitual mimicry of expression. Fear has its own truth, however, and Dorotea’s fear is hers alone. Below, Michelle has sunk against the wall, huddled into a panic-stricken ball amid the scattered trash barrels at the mouth of the alley.

Spider nods. “Second, then. Do either of you fluttering fools know of a new group of vampires here in the city? Visitors, perhaps, that you failed to announce? Comrades from Boston, come to offer you safe return in exchange for information? Anything of that sort?” He draws her closer, his monstrous face now inches from hers. She is still now, trapped by his bitter eyes like a bird by a snake. “Well?”

Her hands fall limp to her sides as she whimpers softly “No. Nothing like-, no, no. No one. We are loyal, Spider. Loyal...”

He snarls. “‘Loyal’? Well, we shall see.” Spider looks at her for a minute longer, before snorting with contempt. “Go, then, ‘loyal’ citizen.” Opening his hand, he smirks as she drops to the alley floor, three stories below.

Her muffled shriek of pain and the whimpers that follow keep him smiling for the next half hour.

 

\------------

 

An hour later, he is on the roof of a warehouse on the waterfront, staring out at the black ocean. Lost in thought, he ignores his buzzing phone for several minutes before answering. “...what?”

“Mary says that she needs to speak with you directly, to avoid misunderstanding. The club will be closed soon, no more than half an hour. Will you meet with her?” Gideon sounds tense. It has been several decades since Mary has met with anyone other than a family functionary. Spider considers.

“One hour, behind the club. Tell Malcolm what is happening.” He drops the phone into a pocket and continues watching the horizon for some time. Finally, he rouses and looks south, considering.

“Misunderstanding. Well. We shall reach an ‘understanding’, then, witch.” He smiles. The hunter has caught a fresh trace of scent. He springs across the roof, smiling, and races into the darkness, bounding from building to building toward the edge of town and the bright lights of Blue Mary’s.

 


	2. The Hunter and the Hunted

The parking lot behind Blue Mary’s is bounded by forest; low scrub pines and scraggly bushes melting into taller spruces and firs as the seaside wetlands preserve melds into the State forest that borders the south of Queensport. Spider waits in the shadows of the trees, watching the back door of the club. A three story cube, clad in silver and wreathed in blue and red neon, Blue Mary’s illumines the night even once the spotlights in front have been dimmed after closing.

There are few cars in the lot now, and those that remain are parked close to the building. No cover for him to advance, and the light posts are far enough away from the tree line to pose a problem for Spider’s habit of lurking on high. Doubtless the design is deliberate. Finally, the back door opens and an imposing figure emerges. A male, white, dressed in jeans and a black “Security” tshirt, stretched taut over his overmuscled frame. His shoulders are wide enough to make him turn sideways slightly in order to exit, and he ducks his head slightly to avoid hitting the top of the frame. He scans the lot, then strides forward, out into the open. There is something about his movements that puzzles Spider. They are too ...regular, too precise for someone of this size. Spider frowns.

The soft toc-toc-toc of a woman’s confident stride echoes across the lot. Someone has followed the man out, cleverly masked by his inordinate bulk. Spider sniffs the cool air and recognizes her scent, that faint tinge of soap, lavender and the oddly muffled female sweat that marks the witch Mary. It has been decades since he smelled her, but nothing in it has changed. The man, though, Spider cannot catch his scent at all. It is as though Mary were walking out alone. Only the smell of warm stone..., that grows stronger as the man approaches. He stops, several yards short of the edge of the lot, and scans the blackness like a metronome.

“I am here, Mr. Spider. As are you. Will you come out and speak with me?” Her voice is clear and cold, just as he remembers. Spider watches the huge man suspiciously for a few more moments and then steps forward from the trees, just shy of the edge of the light. The man’s dull eyes lock onto Spider as a slim figure steps out from behind him.

She is dressed much as she was when last he saw her, conservative black skirt and jacket over dull gray buttoned shirt, dark hair pulled back in a bun. There is no trace of the intervening decades on her face; the only lines there are a small furrow between her brows and a sardonic quirk at the corner of her mouth. She has looked like a woman in her mid-thirties for the last fifty years, that Spider is aware of. The quirk spreads to a wry smile as she nods politely to Spider.

“Your servant asked a question of me, but that question has a complex answer. One best given to an authority figure, and it is one you may not wish to hear. May I give you that answer?”

So carefully she speaks. A mingled irritation at her circuitous speech and appreciation for her evident caution keeps Spider curiously on edge. It is likely that she knows this as well; manipulation is her gift. The appreciation for her gift of fear wins out, and he nods, once.

“Well, then. I have never hired one of your kind; none have ever approached me here seeking such employment. I have occasional dealings with some of your kind from outside Queensport, as your leader knows, but those dealings are strictly commercial. I do not involve myself with your politics, as per our agreement. None the less, one of your kind is now in my employ.”

She frowns slightly. “I must say I am not entirely pleased with this. The girl in question is one for whom I’d had plans, plans which her current state render moot. As it happens, she was kidnapped, I assume by one of your subjects, a little more than a week ago, and transformed into one of you several days ago. She has no knowledge of her attacker; for that matter, she was not entirely sure what had happened to her until her ...urges manifested themselves. It would seem that she and two others were all kidnapped, transformed, and abandoned at the same time. To what end, I’ve no idea.”

“Never the less, while she was not attacked here in my club, I’m uncomfortable that someone in my employ was subjected to this sort of ...experiment. I’m given to understand that under your regime, uncontrolled transformation is frowned upon, yes?” Spider nods, as his mind races. “Then we have a common interest in discovering who is responsible for this. I will, of course, defer to your procedures of judgement and punishment for those responsible, but in the interests of expediting the process, I’ll tell you what I know. I’d be most appreciative if you and your master would be as kind as possible to the girl as you acclimate her to your society; she is an interesting girl and I’d be saddened if something else were to happen to her.”

“The girl’s name is Cassandra Marshall; her companions are Rick and Willem. From what she knows, they’re both residents of Queensport, but not natives. Neither is she; she’s originally from California. She’s in her early twenties, blonde, attractive, intelligent, athletic. She did not know the others before her transformation, and she knows little enough about them now. Rick was apparently some sort of musician, Willem, a businessman of some kind. They’re staying with her at her apartment at the moment. It would seem they’ve enough sense to feed discreetly thus far, though Cassandra has her doubts about her companions.”

Spider is smiling now, a fierce pleasure in his eyes. Finally, a trail worth following. He tilts his head, staring into Mary’s eyes and asks, “Where?”

Mary smiles back coldly. “57 Barlett Street. It’s an apartment building. Hers is on the second floor. She drives a gray Ford sedan, recent year; her companion Rick drives an old van, white, in poor condition. Is there any other information you need?”

“No. Your request for clemency will be considered.” And then, grudgingly, Spider adds, “...and your concerns regarding your employees’ safety from our residents will be mentioned.” She has, after all, been more helpful that he’d expected.

Mary nods politely. “That is all I ask.”

Spider sneers and turns to go. As he does, Mary clears her throat and says, “One more small favor, if I may? Just a quick question, unconnected with our current problem.” Spider looks back at her, frowning.

“Something about my bodyguard alarms you. Could you tell me what it is? I’m reluctant to probe deeper; it seems so impolite, given our circumstances. But I would like to have an idea of how his façade is failing.”

Spider looks from her to her immense bodyguard, then back. Slowly, he says “...his scent. He does not smell human. His movements are odd, but the smell is what makes me suspicious.” The bodyguard does not react at all, but continues to stare dully at Spider.

“Hmm. I had not considered that enhanced senses might prove a problem. The glamour in question was designed for human senses...” She thinks for a moment, head tilted as she looks at her companion. “That will require some adjustment, then. Thank you, Mr. Spider. You’ve been most helpful.” She turns and walks back toward the club, and her bodyguard follows, blocking Spider’s view. His head is still turned to look back over his shoulder at Spider, but he does not stumble as he follows her to the door.

Spider continues to stare at the door for several minute after they’re gone. This has doubtless been another subtle demonstration of her power, meant to shake his confidence in his ability to kill her if Malcolm orders it. Whatever the creature that guards her may be, though, it will not save her from his wrath should Malcolm give the word. Never the less, he will ask Gideon to find out about her new servants. Best to know, first.

 

\--------

 

Several minutes later, Spider lurks on the roof of an apartment building across the street from his quarry’s home. The neighborhood borders Grover Heights, one of Queensport’s more predatory housing developments; these once working-class apartment buildings have fallen into disrepair and gang tags have begun to mark the walls. This end of the street retains some illusion of safety, but that illusion is tenuous at best. Spider has hunted the footpaths and stairwells of the Heights from time to time, but spends little time here in the bordering neighborhoods.

It is still several hours till dawn. If Mary’s description of this Cassandra are accurate, she will likely have the presence of mind to return to her lair long before sunrise. With luck, she will have been able to persuade her more reckless companions to join her, and Spider can get a look at all three of them. Unless they are already inside, but he has seen no sign of activity in any of the second floor windows, and no cars matching the descriptions he was given are parked nearby. One set of windows seems to have been blocked from inside, with what looks like blankets; not a bad attempt, for newly Embraced fledglings. Enough protection to allow some degree of daytime activity, though they will likely still sleep the daylight hours out. The innate fear of the sun lies heavily on the newborn.

Nearly half an hour later, a gray sedan rounds the corner and slides to a stop two houses down. It pulls into a vacant parking spot and shuts off, and the occupants remain inside for several minutes, apparently deep in conversation. First to emerge is a young-looking male, white, with roughly cut brown hair, several days of unshaven scruff, jeans and leather jacket over a bare chest. He’s laughing at something, and as Spider gets a clearer look, the deeprooted anger in him swells, urging him to leap down and tear out this puny interloper’s throat. He wrestles that feeling back down and smiles viciously. That tell-tale hate-at-first-sight is proof enough. Here is his prey.

The driver’s door opens and a young woman steps out, snickering as she replies to the man. This would be Cassandra, most likely. She matches the description; young, blonde, attractive enough, dressed for the hunt in provocative clothing designed to show off her body and blind her prey with lust. She prompts a similar aggression in him, slightly lessened from the first man. Both feel young, weak; the power in their blood a tiny candle next to Spider’s roaring flame. As she and her companion walk toward the apartment building, another man slides out of the rear of the car. This one slides away from Spider’s gaze as he follows the other two; no anger, no fear, nothing but a void. A mortal servant? Unlikely for ones so young, and he does not seem deferential enough... and then Spider recalls Maggarian. Another like him, a hidden vampire! But the others show no signs of that breed. Could they have more than one sire?

Spider forces himself to focus on the third one as they enter the building. Older than the first man, and better dressed. His clothing is well made, an expensive suit that is stained with dirt, blood and other things. A faint smell of rot floats up to Spider as the man enters the building. Most likely this is Willem, which would make the first man Rick. He watches the blocked off windows carefully, and moments later is rewarded by faint traces of illumination at the edges of the blankets as the apartment lights go on. Lesser eyes would have missed them, but Spider sees much more than most. He considers, and then leaps across the street, landing on his prey’s building with an almost imperceptible thud. Carefully, he creeps down the side of the building, keeping to the shadows and perches beside one of the blocked windows.

The faint sounds of voices from within filter through the blankets taped to the inside of the windows. The woman’s voice is clear and merry, confident as she banters with one of the men. Rick, from the sound of it. The other man speaks now, his voice an unsettlingly erratic whisper that trails off into incoherence. Cassandra continues, speaking as if he’d said nothing at all.

Spider listens for some time, catching snatches of conversation but focusing on the feeling behind the words rather than the words themselves. The woman Cassandra, is less confident than she sounds, as is Rick. His bravado is matched by her flirtatious sarcasm, both hiding their fears from each other. The other, Willem, is disconnected; his speech random and erratic. The others speak over him, only barely involving him in their discussion. What Spider gleans from the fragments he registers is their concern with discovering their origins, who made them, why, what exactly has happened to them.

Considering, Spider climbs back to the roof. He looks out over the city; dawn will come soon. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out the hated phone and dials Malcolm’s number. Quickly, he relates all he has learned.

“I will remain here, and wait for day to pass. When they rouse, I will follow them and see where they go and what they do. If this is an act, then I will discover it. If it is no act, then we shall see.” Malcolm grudgingly assents, and Spider hangs up. Malcolm is never happy when Spider sleeps away from the Labyrinth. Spider is unsure if it is paranoia about what Spider may do away from his eyes or simply concern for his safety, and cares little either way.

Looking off the edge of the roof, Spider sees a patch of rubble-strewn dirt between the apartment buildings. Diving off, he lands softly and finding a concealed corner of the building, crouches down. He rests his enormous hands flat on the ground and closes his eyes. The earth is cool and damp, soft between his fingers. That softness grows liquid in moments, and the ground bubbles beneath his feet and up over his ankles as he slowly sinks into the embrace of the darkness. Sleep comes swiftly.

 

\---------

 

In the dark below the earth, Spider feels the pressure of the sun fade as he wakes. Night is rising, and so is he. The soil ripples and parts as he emerges to the sound of bickering mortals behind the house; a man and woman squabbling about fidelity and its absence. Spider springs up onto the side of the building. Peering around the edge, down into the small yard, he watches them for a few moments until the woman slaps the man and storms into the apartment building, shouting imprecations and threatening dire consequences for her betrayed trust. The man returns the sentiments, hurling a bottle at the door as she closes it behind her. Spider smirks as he watches the man stumble off and listens as the woman climbs the stairs, mumbling to herself drunkenly.

He clambers over to the window of Cassandra’s apartment and listens as the three fledglings awaken, stirring slowly in their cocoon of wood and cloth. Above him, a small racket arises as the enraged woman arrives in her apartment and begins hurling her former lover’s possessions out the window into the yard. Spider rolls his eyes and focuses on the muffled sounds from within the apartment.

The crashing and thumping continues for several minutes, considerably impeding hisefforts. Finally, his patience exhausted, Spider scales the wall to the third floor and peers around the corner at the open window. The woman is leaning out, shouting something defamatory into the darkness. He pulls himself up onto the roof and softly skitters over to the edge directly over her. Looking down, he snarls at the top of her head and then quickly scans the nearby windows. Her dramatics appear to have attracted no audience yet, but that will likely change quickly. One more quick look around, and then he reaches down and engulfs her head with one giant hand, pulling her out the window and up onto the roof. Dragging her back from the edge, he raps her head against a nearby chimney twice, and her struggles stop. Crouching over her on the cheap tarpaper roof, he considers a moment, then stoops and bites into her neck, drinking deep. Hot blood flows down his throat, cut with a slight tang of alcohol, and for a moment he is calm. Rich red taste, soft slowing pulse, the salt breeze rustling his hood against the back of his head; all is as it should be.

But perfection ends, and he pulls himself away. Licking blood from his gnarled fangs, he looks down at her speculatively. Yes, that will work. He licks the side of her neck, torn by his teeth, and the wound closes. She is still breathing and moving; shallow gasps and twitches as her body feebly tries to cope with the sudden absence of much of its blood. Spider pulls his phone from his pocket and scrolls through the numbers the family has helpfully entered into it for him. Yes, Sergeant Davis. He will do.

“Davis. Listen carefully. In several minutes I will call you again. Arrange for someone to call the station and report a woman falling from her window at 57 Bartlett Street. Make sure you are the one to answer the call, and make sure you are accompanied by someone skilled in burglary. The woman’s apartment is on the third floor, but there is an apartment on the second floor at the front of the building that needs to be examined, carefully and without leaving evidence. I will call you when the residents of that apartment leave. Be quick.” He hangs up on Davis’s monosyllabic assurances and climbs back down the wall to the second floor, pressing his ear to the window.

The voices from within are softer now, farther inside than before. He peers around the corner at the front of the house and hisses in frustration. Not two houses down the street, several youths have encamped themselves on the front porch of another building. He will have to stay on the side, between the buildings, to avoid their eyes. Thoughts of mutilation and death visited upon the inconvenient observers flit through his mind as Spider resumes his post by the window.

Thankfully, within ten minutes Cassandra and her companions have decided to leave the apartment. As the muffled click of the door lock reaches him, Spider springs up to the roof and skitters over to the front, peering down at the porch. As soon as the three exit, he leaps over to the unconscious woman’s body and lifts her with one hand while dialing Davis with the other. He hears the car start and smiles. Dropping the woman off the roof, he says into the phone, “Now, Davis. Be quick, I do not know how much time you will have.” He drops the phone into his pocket and springs back to the front of the roof, in time to watch the gray sedan pull around the corner.

He follows them from the rooftops for some time before they park and emerge, heading toward one of the city’s music clubs. As they enter, Rick bantering with the doorman familiarly, Spider’s phone buzzes. He considers a moment and then leaps to the roof of the club. The deafening sound from inside makes the roof vibrate under his bare feet. Pulling the phone from his pocket, he answers it while quickly checking the back of the club for an unobserved window. Sergeant Davis’s voice is even and cold.

“We’re finished. Daniel says that the apartment belongs to a Cassandra Marshall, young, student at Queensport State. Also employed at Blue Mary’s. Been at the address for over a year. Says there’s old food in the fridge, at least a week old, but there’s people living there now. No recent food, though, no takeout, no delivery. Windows are blocked off, looks recent. Says it looks like one or two other people living there with her now, but that’s recent. Looks like she’s sleeping alone, though. Lots of books, school and personal. No family pictures out, said there was a box under the bed with a few shots of her younger with an old lady, looked like her, probably grandmother. Nothing else.”

“Good enough. Look into her in the police records and tell me what you find.”

Spider hangs up and climbs down the back of the building to a darkened window. Prying it open, he slides inside. It’s some kind of storage room, filled with old equipment and furniture, covered with tarps, dropcloths and years of dust and cobwebs. He creeps carefully through the maze of abandoned junk to the door. Pulling his hood over his inhuman features and shrugging his long sleeves over his hands, he slips out into the corridor and down the stairs to the back of the club. It has been some time since he tried to pass as human at this range; it will be interesting to see if he can still carry it off. A small smile crosses his face. This is more fun than he’s had in years. He creeps out into the club.

In the shadows beside the stage, Spider lurks behind the monolithic speakers. The deafening sounds blasting from them shake the room and make any attempt to hear anything but the rhythmic blare from the stage futile. It’s an excellent place to watch the room from, though. The multicolored stage lights reflect out onto the crowd; mostly younger humans dressed in leather and ragged denim, thrashing clumsily in time to the sound. Outside the central floor, tables and chairs are pushed up against the walls, small alcoves are set up for those who want more privacy, and against one wall, a long bar serves a raucous throng of thirsty dancers and spectators.

In a matter of seconds, he has spotted Cassandra at the bar, flirting with a younger man, and Rick off to one side, chatting with a provocatively dressed woman, but Willem is nowhere to be found. Several minutes later, he catches a glimpse of him, lurking near the bathrooms. Over the next hour as he watches them, Cassandra lures her target off to an alcove, emerging minutes later flushed and warmed by her meal; Rick fails to impress his initial prey, but has more success seducing a younger woman into the bathroom with him; and Willem continues lurking, only to slip into the bathroom once Rick has left, evidently to poach from his leftovers.

The three reunite and leave the bar, and Spider creeps back toward the door to the upstairs. As he reaches for the knob, a hand slaps roughly on his shoulder and tries to pull him back. “Hey, employees only, buddy! Lemme see your handstamp, pal!” The voice is male, arrogant and pitched to cut through the astonishing noise from the speakers. Spider snarls and flicks a glance over his shoulder at his assailant, a muscular and tattooed young man wearing a “staff” tshirt and a satisfied smirk. The smirk vanishes as Spider spins about, one enormous hand darting out to grab the bouncer by the throat and lifting him off the ground effortlessly, then slamming him into the wall beside the door.

Stunned, the bouncer begins to turn purple as Spider’s grip tightens. Spider leans in close, his inhuman features still hidden in the shadow of his hood, and whispers “There is a young woman in the men’s bathroom. She is unwell. Attend her, and live. Confront me and die.” He turns his face to catch the light from the stage, and allows a small fraction of the rage inside him to blossom in his eyes as he glares into the man’s panic-stricken face. The bouncer whimpers, and the acrid stench of urine fills the air. Spider drops him and strides past, through the door, up the stairs and out the window.

Once on the roof, he springs to the front of the building and scans the street, cursing the delay. It has begun to rain; a cold drizzle that begins to soak his baggy clothes and coats the streets in glittering reflections of light. Ah. He was not too late, they have just re-entered the car, and now they pull out into the street and he resumes the chase.

Some time later, the car stops close to one of the city’s impound lots. After several minutes of muffled discussion inside the car, Rick steps out and approaches the small lighted booth at the gate, turning his collar up against the rain. Spider springs to the top of a nearby telephone pole, and cocks an ear down toward him.

“Hey, listen, man, I really need to get my van out of hock. Whadda I gotta do, man?” The voice from inside the booth is muffled by the bulletproof glass that encases his tiny fortress. Something about ‘daytime hours’ and ‘impound fees’; Spider is not particularly concerned with his side of the conversation.

“But man, I can’t come back during the day! I got ...stuff... I gotta be doing, and I need my van! C’mon, hook a brother up, willya? You help me, I help you on down the line man, c’mon...”

A burst of profanity and laughter from the booth, and Spider sees Rick’s conciliatory smile twist into a snarl.

“You gotta be an asshole about it, man! Why you gotta be such an asshole?”

Though no sound emerges, the man is evidently offering some insulting gesture, as Rick’s snarl turns into a flare of rage and he punches the glass window, slamSlamSLAM! The booth shakes, but the glass holds. From inside, something about ‘police’ and more profanity.

“Fine, fuckhead! See if I care! You’ll get yours, man!” Rick storms off, growling to himself as he strides down the street and around the corner. Cassandra has pulled her car further down the road, and Spider leaps to the top of the warehouse at the corner, flicking glances back and forth between her parked but running car and Rick, now paused at the mouth of an alley.

“Ah, fuck it. What are they gonna do?” He runs down the alley, and Spider springs across the roof to the edge, looking down. Rick is scaling the chainlink fence at the end of the alley that blocks its entrance to the lot. As he picks his way through the barbed wire at the top, he mutters to himself, “Hope they didn’t search it or anything. That’d be a pain in the ass...” Softly he lands and creeps through the lot toward a battered van parked close to the fence on the other side of the lot. Spider chuckles to himself. Bold, if not wise. And the boy shows some skill at stalking; he makes it to the van with barely a sound and slides inside without arousing the attendant in the booth.

Moments later, the van purrs to life, the engine’s smooth growl belying the van’s rust-spotted exterior. Suddenly, it jerks into action, tires spinning, then catching as the van accelerates toward the fence. A rattling crash, and the fence stretches over the front bumper, then tears and splits as the van drives through the gaping hole, jagged links gouging at the blotchy paint. The van bounces over the curb and into the street, tires screeching as it speeds away into the night.

Spider shakes his head. Youthful folly. He hopes the boy has some deeper plan than this, else he will likely not survive his first year of unlife. As he springs to the top of a telephone pole and begins his pursuit of the van, he briefly wonders when he began thinking of the boy as someone to worry about rather than something to kill. Behind and below him, the gray sedan pulls out and joins the chase.

Some fifteen minutes later and half a town away, the van pulls into another junkyard. This one is much less organized than the last. As the van slows to a stop in front of the disheveled strip of garages that line one side of the yard, a pack of mangy curs race toward it, encircling the van in a froth of yelping aggression. Spider skids to a stop atop a nearby warehouse and crouches at the edge of the roof, watching intently. A portly man emerges from the office at the end of the strip and pushes his way through the throng of dogs to the van. He and Rick speak briefly, interrupted by the arrival of Cassandra and her car. The dogs rush her intruding vehicle eagerly until called off by the raggedly dressed watchman, who concludes his business with Rick by tossing him a set of keys and waving toward the last garage, before whistling to the dogs. The pack swarms about him as the van drives deeper into the lot, followed gingerly by the sedan.

The rain has diminished to a fine misting as Spider leaps across the street and creeps down to the roof of the strip of garages. The watchman has returned to his office, and the sound of television soon emerges from within. Most of the dogs scatter amid the haphazardly parked cars in the lot, except for a few that loiter outside the door of the last garage, sniffing the tires of Cassandra’s sedan curiously. She and the other vampire have joined Rick inside, and Spider silently stalks the roof down to the end before crouching and pressing his ear to the corrugated metal of the roof.

Within, the hiss of spraypaint is interrupted by chatter as the three discuss the night’s events. Cassandra seems slightly exasperated and Willem amused by Rick’s antics, but Rick dismisses her concerns, largely based on the fact that they remain at large. The three sound almost happy despite their bickering, and Spider wonders at their camaraderie. They seem more comfortable with each other than he would have expected given the recentness of their acquaintance. He considers the possibility that Mary has deceived him.

Some time later, Cassandra emerges and takes her car toward the entrance of the junkyard, followed by curious dogs. Moments later, the van re-emerges, now painted a dull green and with new license plates, and follows her out. Spider slinks along the roof of the garage and watches them pull down the street, considering. At the end of the street, the van and the car split up, the car heading back towards Cassandra’s apartment and the van driving west, toward the edge of the city. Spider growls and springs after the van.

Some blocks later, the van pulls over and Willem emerges, drifting into a nearby alley. Rolling his eyes in exasperation, Spider watches the van drive off and follows Willem.

Over the next hour, he watches Willem meander through alleys and back streets, peering in windows and watching the city’s nightlife cycle through its endless little dramas. Spider stalks alongside him, looking down as Willem drifts past the tiny enclaves of life and wondering what he looks for. Surely he is not still hungry. He seems more curious than anything else, even as he approaches one of the younger prostitutes, a disarming smile pasted across his face.

She looks up at him with poorly disguised eagerness as she makes her offer. He nods acceptance and follows her into a nearby alley, behind an overflowing dumpster. In the darkness, she kneels and fumbles at his pants until he reaches down and pulls her up, one hand holding her puzzled face as the other strokes her badly dyed hair out of her eyes. Spider idly picks a small fragment of brick free from a nearby chimney and rolls it around in his hand as he watches Willem wrap his hand around the teenage girl’s throat and begin to squeeze.

Her eyes widen and she begins to struggle, pulling at his arms and kicking franticly as he lifts her off the ground and presses her back against the wall, staring into her eyes as he squeezes. The girl’s soft gurgles of protest are lost in the hiss of the rain. As her struggles slow and stop, her eyes glaze over and Willem stares more intently into them, as if looking for something. She goes limp, and finally he slowly lets go, letting her drop with a soft thump. Willem glances carelessly down at her limp form before offhandedly nudging some of the overflowing trash from the dumpster over on top of her.

As Willem slowly drifts back toward the entrance to the alley, Spider flicks the tiny rock at the metal lid of the dumpster. The sharp clatter echoes through the alley, Willem tenses and then vanishes, as if he were never there. Distracted, Spider wonders for a moment what he’s doing there, eyes wandering over the rooftops. Who is he looking for...? And then he snarls and leans over the edge of the roof, glaring down into the alley. The worm is there, he knows it, he feels him there, wrapping himself in shadowy forgetfulness. Spider’s furious gaze darts back and forth, piercing the darkness and tearing apart the cloak of mental fog that Willem has assumed. There he is, crouching behind a pile of foul smelling debris, peering franticly about him. Spider’s eyes narrow. This one will become a problem. At least he’s still sane enough to cover his tracks.

 


	3. Into the Labyrinth

Spider leaps from roof to roof, thinking. The boy Rick is careless and bold, but clever enough in his way. He may be capable of learning and abiding the few laws that Malcolm has laid down for those under his protection, once his place in the order of things is made clear to him. The other one, Willem, is a more complex issue. He seems erratic and unpredictable, and Spider is uncertain if he’s sane enough to be threatened into compliance. He will bear watching.

Casssandra, though. Spider does not know enough about her to judge, yet. As he lands on her roof, he grimaces. Observing her will be a challenge. She moves in circles that are difficult for him to conceal himself in. Quickly, he scans the street below. Yes, her car is there. Good. He creeps down the side of the building to her window and presses his ear to the glass.

Muffled voices within, engaged in soft conversation. Has Rick returned? No, this is not the way she speaks to him. Who then? Spider frowns. Scuttling quickly to the back of the building, he forces open the small window to the back staircase and creeps inside. He must get closer.

Carefully he clings to the ceiling of the corridor, long fingers and toes attaching gecko-like to the blotched wood panelling as he skitters along. Hanging just above the door to her apartment, he listens.

Cassandra and the unknown man speak softly, gently, like lovers. The sound of skin against skin mingles with the creaking of the sofa, and under it all is the sharp smell of fresh blood mixed with the rich scent of vampire’s vitae. She has fed this one her blood. How can she have known to do that? Has she Changed him? Spider’s mind races as he listens, head nearly pressed against the door.

Marcus, she calls him. His voice is slurred and dazed, as if drugged. Her blood has taken hold of him, its power overwhelming his mortal mind and binding his will to hers. The secrets of binding mortals with the taste of immortal’s blood has always been one of the cornerstones of the family’s power. Other kindred do it as well, he has heard, but for a fledgling to do so, without instruction? Unlikely at best. No, she must have some source of knowledge he has not yet found, some vampire teaching her the tricks that make a hidden eternal life possible. The others, her companions, seem as ignorant as they should be. Perhaps she does not share her knowledge with them?

She and this Marcus seem well acquainted. She does not speak to him as a master to a slave, but as an old friend or lover. His questions about her daylight whereabouts are gently and efficiently deflected. So, Marcus is unaware of her transition. That is something, at least.

The creak of the downstairs door jars Spider from his thoughts. The smell of alcohol, blood and bile drifts up the stairwell, followed by the tread of booted feet. Spider darts back down the hallway and out the window, just as Rick turns the staircase corner. Wiping a last trickle of bloody vomit from the corner of his mouth, he looks at his fingers with distaste and rubs the offending liquids on the wall. While vampires can mimic mortal ingestion, they cannot keep the pretense up for long and the food or drink is soon rejected by their undead bodies. Spider abandoned the practice so long ago that he’s forgotten what alcohol tastes like. It seems that Rick has been socializing.

Spider peeks through the window as Rick knocks impatiently at the door. “Hey, Cass! Put some clothes on your boyfriend and lemme in!” Moments later, the door opens and he slips inside, grinning at Cassandra’s irritated grimace. From Spider’s perspective, she looks to have answered the door in the nude.

He briefly considers returning to the door to hear their conversation better, but caution prevails. They must not know he’s there. Straining, he hears fragments of Rick’s mocking jibes, Cassandra’s annoyed replies, and Marcus’s confused protests, and a few minutes later, Marcus emerges, still buttoning his shirt as Cassandra kisses him goodbye. A whispered reassurance, and the door closes.

Spider’s first look at Marcus does not impress him. Expensive looking clothes, slightly rumpled, blandly handsome looks spoiled by a petulant expression as he stumbles down the corridor in the dark. As he nears the window, Spider smells sex and blood still on him.

Marcus leaves the house and walks to his car, an upscale European sedan. Spider peers around the edge of the house long enough to memorize the plate number and returns to the side window, pressing his ear to the glass. Cassandra and Rick are arguing now, loudly enough to penetrate the blanket-muffled window. Her patience with his interference with her life seems to be fraying.

The argument continues for some time, petering out amid insincere apologies from Rick and slightly more sincere threats of eviction should his behavior not improve from Cass. Spider sneers. Judging from the rote tone of much of the exchange, this is not the first time they’ve had these differences. Then, his attention is drawn by off-key whistling echoing from the street. Creeping to the front of the house, he sees Willem wandering up to the stairs. Something in his jacket pocket has leaked through the expensive material, and as he enters the front hall, Willem dips his finger into the pocket and smears a dark semi-liquid streak on the doorknob. Spider sniffs carefully, trying to catch the scent of whatever it is. Rotten blood, several days old by the smell.

He returns to the window in time to hear both Cass and Rick unite in browbeating Willem into removing his coat and throwing it away. They make a concerted effort to convince him to change the rest of his clothes, with less success. Willem’s lack of interest in hygiene has apparently grown far more noticeable over the last few days, judging from the litany of complaints from his friends. Soon, he’ll likely be crawling in the back alleys like Maggarian. Frowning, Spider climbs back up to the roof. It will be dawn in an hour or so.

He calls Malcolm and relays the night’s events to him. After a short argument, Spider agrees to return to the Labyrinth for the moment so that Malcolm can discuss things with him in person. Snarling in irritation, he hangs up and considers bursting in through the window and dragging all three of them, Cassandra, Rick, and Willem, with him to see Malcolm. But no. He must discover who is behind this, who has made these three and set them out for him to find. He will not take the bait, not yet. There will be time yet for ripping and tearing and screaming. Soon.

 

\-------

 

“So, you think she is in contact with her sire? Or with some other vampire who has yet to reveal himself?” The sun has been up for nearly half an hour, and still Malcolm pokes and pries at him. Spider paces the length of the wooden table angrily. Why will he not see?

“How else could she know these things? She has fed that human her blood, enslaved him! She may have Changed him! Abandoned fledglings do not do that. Someone is instructing her, or she is not what Mary claims she is. Perhaps Mary has allied herself with the lords of Boston, and this Cassandra is their agent, meant to draw us out-”

Malcolm snorts. “To what end? This is not the way to make us trust her, so why do things this way? No, an agent of the Prince of Boston would come as an ally, a Carthian refugee, or a Circle witch escaping the Spear’s Inquisitors. This is something else, I think.”

Spider slumps sullenly into a crouch at the end of the table. “What else could it be?” He digs at the edge of the table with his thick thumbnail, frowning.

“We do not have enough information to guess, yet. Continue to observe them for a night or so, then let one of them see you. See how they react to seeing another vampire. That will tell us a great deal. And then, we will decide what to do with them.” Malcolm shuffles through the papers in front of him. “Another note. Davis has done a basic check on that Marcus’s license plate. He says it’s registered to a Marcus Vayle, local bank manager. He’s married, apparently not happily. Davis lists two restraining orders on him from his wife in the last three years, and they have separate addresses. No other criminal records.”

“He’s also checked into Cassandra’s police record. There’s nothing there, and there’s no record of her at all older than two years, prior to her arrival here in Queensport. He says that she did get her license renewed here during the day, so she was mortal then. She was Embraced here, after her arrival, and not that long ago. He says she renewed the license 3 months ago.”

Spider grumbles and continues digging at the edge of the table. There is still something wrong about her, and he will not be happy until he understands what it is, until he sees it in her eyes.

“Very well. I will continue to watch.”

 

\------------

 

The next two nights pass much the same. Cassandra and Rick go out hunting, preying on clubgoers and barflies, and Willem wanders off, scavenging off their leavings or feeding from the homeless or from prostitutes. Sometimes he kills, sometimes he does not; only some of his kills are for feeding. The rest seem to be simply to watch his victims die. He still retains the presence of mind to hide his kills, but Spider is unsure how long that will last. The three meet and wander the night after feeding, sometimes in Cassandra’s car, sometimes in Rick’s van, but most of the time on foot. They look for something, but even they seem unsure as to what.

Spider has passed the word through the family to the rest of the city’s undead residents: stay off the streets, stay hidden. He is hunting, and he will brook no interference. They know well enough to heed his warning. The streets are empty of hunters now, all but Spider and his prey.

A few times, Spider thinks that Rick or Cassandra have caught a glimpse of him shadowing their movements from the rooftops. He is careful to keep his distance, and outside of a few nervous glances at the skyline, the trio do not seem to change their behavior. They return to Cassandra’s apartment every night.

Cassandra visits Marcus again, at his apartment this time. Spider listens carefully, but their conversation revolves entirely around sex and Marcus’s quickly suppressed jealousy of Cassandra’s companions. Spider finds himself unaccountably irritated by the sound of their sexual antics, and the faint scent of her blood through the closed windows of his apartment rouses a mysterious hunger in him. It has been several days since he has fed; the continual stalking has consumed his attention to the exclusion of all other tasks.

He finds himself following Cassandra almost exclusively now. Something about her seems familiar to him, but he cannot place it. Her voice, the smell of her blood, the distant glimpses of her face; he knows her. It itches in his mind, and he finds himself fighting the urge to snatch her from the street and tear her secrets from her one by screaming one. He has not called Malcolm for two days.

 

\--------

 

On the third night, Spider decides to end the dance.

They are in the center of town, in what passes for a business district in Queensport. By night, these alleys belong to the homeless; so long as they do not sleep in front of the office buildings and storefronts, the city’s police leave them alone for the most part, and the loading docks and delivery bays provide ample shelter. Willem and Rick are feeding off one of the sleeping bums as Cassandra waits impatiently at the entrance to the alley.

Spider watches her from across the street, concealed behind a dilapidated sign for the long defunct furniture store that once occupied the building below him. She leans against a rusted dumpster, short black dress riding up her legs as she taps one foot against the metal box. Her head is tilted back, looking at the night sky. It is clear tonight, and the moon is low in the sky. She is looking at the stars. The faint smile on her lips belies the impatient tapping of her foot.

Slowly, Spider creeps around the sign and out onto the front of the building. Faintly illumined by the buzzing, flickering streetlight half a block away, he stops and stares. Out in the open, now; watching and waiting, crouched like his namesake at the center of his web. Waiting for her to turn and see him, for the fly to take its first step onto the strand.

A rustle of trash and low muttering; Rick and Willem have finished their meal and are walking back to Cassandra. Rick snickers at something as she turns to look at them. Willem looses a gurgling chuckle and wipes the blood from his chin. Cassandra sighs and reaches out to do the same for Rick as he approaches. Smiling, Rick looks at her and then stiffens in shock as he looks over her shoulder and locks eyes with Spider. Spider sees the flare of rage within Rick contort his face as he shoulders her aside, steps quickening to a run as he bursts out of the alley into the street and points up at him.

“Hey! Asshole! Who the fuck are you and why are you following us? Hey! HEY!! I’m talkin’ to you, ugly! Hey-” Rick is nearly bouncing with anger as his tirade continues, but Spider is barely listening now. She has turned and is looking at him.

Her eyes are calm, the fear that flashes across them gone nearly as quickly as it rises. They are violet, an odd shade that shimmers in the darkness of the alley as she steps back. Behind her, Willem steps behind the dumpster, but Spider ignores him. Her face is pale, the flush of feeding gone now. She reaches into her small handbag, grasping something within but not removing it. Her arm tenses. It is likely a weapon, but Spider does not care. The dress reveals as much as it conceals, if not more. It hugs her form, tight black fabric stretched across her breasts, wrapping her hips, rucking up her legs as she tenses, ready to leap forward into combat or dive back into the alley in flight. Her mouth is open slightly, teeth biting nervously into her lower lip, her blonde hair falling over her forehead into her eyes. Her eyes.

In the road, Rick is shouting and gesticulating, nearly at the base of the empty store now. Spider has not heard a word he’s said. He is caught in her web.

He knows her. He has seen those eyes, heard her voice speaking to him, heard her say his name. He is frozen, lost in her eyes, lost in his memories; memories broken and torn by madness and centuries of hate and fear, memories clumsily sewn back together into a façade of sanity by Malcolm. So much of him is lost to the darkness inside, so much that he does not, cannot, let himself see. All those holes in his mind, laid bare by her gaze. Inside that darkness is his memory of her, hidden in the void he has never dared to search before.

Enflamed by rage and bravado, Rick has begun to climb the face of the building. Leaping from the street to the ragged aluminum awning, he pulls himself up and onto a tiny brick ledge, then springs up to the pigeon-shit spattered windowsill above. Spider absently notes Rick’s hand darting into his jacket and pulling out a roughly whittled wooden stake as he awkwardly clambers up the building toward his frozen target. He is still shouting as he climbs, but all Spider can hear is her voice, saying his name.

He knows her. But, he notes with growing confusion, she does not know him. Her eyes show fear and determination, not recognition. He frowns and leans downward, preparing to spring across the street, to confront her, when Rick leaps up from the window sill below and stabs wildly at him with the stake.

The wooden point catches in the black cloth of his sweatshirt, raking across his ribs as Rick screams “Yeah, you fucker, how you like that?!” Rick is clinging to the rusted metal frame that braces the sign above them with one hand as he draws back the stake for another strike. Spider shakes his head clear of the memory of her eyes and snarls. Cursed whelp. He dodges the boy’s next strike with ease, bats the stake from his hand and backhands him across the face with one swift blow. Roaring incoherent curses, Rick leaps at him.

Rick loops one arm around Spider’s shoulders, grasping his loose sweatshirt with one hand and punching rapidly at his stomach with the other as he uses the embrace to allow him to snap his fangs at Spider’s face, growling like a maddened dog. Spider draws his head back and wraps one enormous hand around Rick’s head, beginning to pry him loose. Rick’s feet scrabble for purchase on the rough brick wall in vain and he stops punching to tangle his other hand in Spider’s clothing. Sinking his fangs into Spider’s finger, he shakes his head back and forth, snarling. Spider barely notices the torn flesh as he slowly begins to squeeze, feeling the bones of Rick’s skull creak beneath his ancient strength.

Both his hands now wrapped in Spider’s sweatshirt, Rick dangles from Spider’s torso and kicks wildly at his legs, trying to loosen the grasp of his elongated toes from the building. Spider sneers and brings his other hand up, now clinging to the wall only by his feet. Twisting Rick’s head to the side, he holds his free hand before Rick’s face and flexes his fingers. The elongated digits twist and stretch, Spider’s flesh drawing back from the nails and bones as they reform in seconds into jagged swordlike talons. Rick flinches as Spider clicks them together mockingly, then gasps as with one swift strike, Spider buries them in his gut.

The claws sink into Rick’s dead stomach and tear free, ripping a handful of pale meat free and flinging it out in to the darkness before whipping around to gouge another chunk of flesh out of his writhing torso. Rick fumbles his hands free of Spider’s shirt and franticly tries to fend off the cruel blades as they swing back for another strike.

Rick now dangles from Spider’s hand like a doll, wriggling wildly away from his short jabs and playful swipes. Spider smiles viciously, toying with him for a few seconds before stabbing his claws into his chest in one short strike. Springing free from the wall, he stares into Rick’s panicked eyes as they fall toward the street below.

The crunch of Rick’s shattering ribs widens Spider’s smile as they hit the sidewalk. He lands with one knee planted on Rick’s chest, beside the clawed hand still buried in his ribcage. As Rick scrabbles feebly at him, Spider lets go of his head, draws back his arm and hammers his clenched fist into the side of his face. The fist is nearly the size of Rick’s head, and Spider can feel his cheek and jaw shatter under his knuckles.

Rick’s struggles grow weaker, and Spider leans down and hisses into his face “Cease struggling and live, or keep fighting and die. Choose, infant.” Terror and hate war in Rick’s eyes for a moment, but terror wins. He closes his eyes and goes limp.

Spider rises from his crouch, pressing one long foot down on Rick’s neck and turns to look across the street. In the mouth of the alley, Cassandra stands, mouth gaping as she pulls her hand from her bag clutching a small pistol. She stumbles backward for a second before her shoulders tense in determination and she steps forward, raising the gun toward him. Behind her, Willem is nowhere to be seen.

A twisted smile crosses Spider’s face as he looks into her eyes again. That ferocity of purpose, so strangely familiar. Well, he will see how determined she is, now. He pulls his clawed hand from Rick’s chest, wraps it around his neck and springs thirty feet into the air, dragging Rick’s ragdoll form with him. With his free hand, Spider grasps the frame of the sign at the top of the wall, swinging himself and his prize onto the roof. Crouched at the edge of the roof, he looks down to see Cassandra in the center of the street looking up at him, pistol hanging forgotten in her hand. He flips Rick’s limp form over one shoulder and leaps from the building to the roof of the abandoned warehouse next to it, and then on to the next.

Glancing back, he sees her begin to run after him. He smiles. How far will she go?

He lopes from building to building, roof to roof, occasionally looking back to make sure he has not lost her. He is careful to remain close to the edges of the roofs he travels, to stay visible to his pursuer, and his gentle pace keeps her only a few blocks behind him. Gradually, he works his way toward the waterfront, Rick’s limbs flopping against his back as he jogs.

Spider pauses a few streets from the docks and pulls out his phone. Hiding behind a battered chimney, he dials Malcolm’s number. He answers within seconds.

“I have one of them. The boy attacked me, I subdued him. Bringing him to you now. The girl follows, I am allowing her to keep up. The other one has vanished. Where shall I take them?”

A moment’s thought, and “The great throneroom. The Dragons have been brought to me for an audience; this will prove a welcome distraction. Well done-”

Spider hangs up on him.

Moving to the edge of the roof, he looks down. Cassandra is in the middle of an intersection a block away, scanning the rooftops. He grins and leaps across the street, making sure to let her see him, and continues the race.

Two streets later, he crouches atop a low boathouse on the wharf. The sea air is thick here, tatters of fog trailing in among the docks and the smell of rotting fish, seaweed, and pungent chemicals billows over the wharfs toward the city. Spider glances over his shoulder and catches her eye for moment as she rounds the corner and races toward him. How far will she follow him? Time to find out. Resettling his grip on Rick’s neck, he bounds off the roof, sailing over the docks and landing in the harbor.

The dark waters close over him with barely a splash, and he strokes downward and out, toward the middle of the harbor. It is harder to see here, below the surface; thick swirls of mud, silt and sewer filth thread the cold water. His eyes pierce the darkness behind him as he swims, and he smiles again. A slim figure swims after him. He is strangely proud of her determination as he pulls ahead, swimming lower and farther out to sea.

They are close to the bottom of the harbor now, skimming over rusted barrels still leaking oddly colored fluids out into the water and random bits of wreckage from three and a half centuries of poor harbor maintenance. She continues to swim after him, a dozen or so yards behind as he heads toward a large open sewer pipe that juts from the harbor floor. He grasps the crumbling edge of the pipe and pulls himself in, past the long shattered remains of the steel grill that once blocked this deep-set sewer outlet.

A few strokes in, and he begins to feel the strange tingle at the base of his neck again. He is back in the Labyrinth. The pressure of ancient eyes is on him again, Malcolm’s eyes, and behind them, the never fading shadow of the Master’s will. Spider snarls, and strokes on into the darkness.

A few dozen yards into the pipe, he looks back to see Cassandra outlined against the mouth of the sewer. She hesitates, and then swims in, carefully guiding herself along the wall. The water here is not so thick with effluent and silt as the harbor, and he can see her more clearly now. Her face is set, grim with purpose, but her eyes flick blindly from side to side, searching for some hint of illumination. It seems she has not yet developed the keen senses that guide most undead through the darkness that is their native realm. He will have to be more careful to guide her along his trail.

Spider swims on, barely slowed by his limp burden. Rick has not moved since the fall. From time to time, Spider sees his eyes flicker as he glances back, but he seems to have surrendered to the will of the true rulers of the city. Perhaps he will adjust to the necessities of unlife in Queensport with a minimum of difficulty.

The pipe begins to angle upward, and within a few yards Spider emerges from the cold seawater. The upward angle continues for several yards then levels out again, and Spider waits there for Cassandra to surface. The walls and floor of the pipe here are coated with indeterminate muck, slick below his feet. It has been long since this sewer served its original purpose, but the foul residue of that time remains here. Spider ignores the appalling stench with ease borne of centuries of practice, but awaits with silent glee the sight of her reaction.

He is soon rewarded as her head breaks the surface and contorts into a mask of revolted disgust. She climbs from the seawater up the pipe carefully, picking her way through the slime and muck. Her dress is soaked and coated with unidentifiable wastes. He doubt she will have much use for it after this. He turns to go, careful to make enough noise to lead her on, deeper into the Labyrinth.

He is careful to keep his focus on her as they venture further in. Malcolm instructed him long ago, even before he Ascended, on how to guide outsiders through the Labyrinth. A peculiar focus of awareness is required, an enhancement of the senses that Spider is reluctant to indulge except when needed. He has always been uncomfortable here, and opening himself to the strange geometries and alien awareness of the tangled passages of the Labyrinth only enhances that discomfort.

Without his aid, though, she will be lost in minutes. Outsiders, those not born to the family or sworn to its service, find themselves trapped in the Labyrinth’s endless corridors and tunnels, unable to free themselves from its tangled web of passageways. Spider has occasionally lured his foes into the tunnels below the city and watched them go mad or starve into torpor, trapped within the Labyrinth. Exits hide themselves, time stretches and contracts like a worm, passages twist and change, leading intruders in endless looping mazes without escape. Spider remembers, long ago, tricking a shapechanger into chasing him into the sewers and then watching him tear his own throat out after spending the better part of a week endlessly circling the same thirty foot section of sewer pipe.

Malcolm, of course, has a far greater mastery of the Labyrinth’s alien abilities. He can spy on any part of the passages, from anywhere inside the Labyrinth. Doubtless, he is watching now. So, Spider forges ahead, pulling Cassandra in his wake, shielding her from the full effect of the strange realm she has invaded with his will.

The sewer tunnels become roughly shaped stone passages, bending and turning, rising and falling, forking endlessly. With occasional deliberate missteps and scrapes against the walls, Spider lures her on, toward her judgement. He wonders how she will react to seeing Malcolm for the first time. Fledgelings rarely handle that well.

Finally, he approaches the entrance to the great Throneroom. The passage opens out into an enormous circular chamber with a domed ceiling. The walls are stone, as is the floor, but the workmanship is far smoother and cleaner than whatever produced the tunnels. In the center of the room is a circular pool of dark sea water, ten feet wide, and opposite the entranceway, against the wall, is a gigantic stone throne, carved from the wall itself.

The throne is empty. Spider sneers slightly as he enters the chamber. Malcolm has always been prone to dramatic entrances; it seems this will be one of those occasions where he indulges himself. As he strides toward the throne, he ignores the slow procession of slaves entering the room from a small alcove on one side. Old foes of the family, enemies who’ve managed to offend Malcolm personally in some way; Spider cares little. They station themselves about the walls, bearing rough iron candelabras mounted with crude candles that illuminate the room with a flickering reddish light, reflecting off the rippling pool. The light reveals their punishment scars, the black thread that sews shut their eyes, ears and mouths and the legacy of pain written on their skins, revealed by the plain gray loincloths that are their only garments. Some of these have been enduring Malcolm’s justice for more than a century, kept alive by his blood and the cruel ministrations of the family.

Spider has no patience for such elaborate punishments. His enemies die at his hands as soon as he can reach them; the notion of keeping them alive for decades or centuries of suffering seems pointless to him. This, he supposes, is why he is not fit to rule. But that thought leads back to darker memories, ones he is not willing to face, and he forces himself back to the moment. Dropping Rick’s limp form at the base of the throne, he steps off to the side and crouches sullenly against the wall, pulling his hood over his head and glowering at the pool. He waits.

 


	4. Bargains Made

Minutes later, the surface of the pool begins to ripple faster. Malcolm is coming. Across the room, Spider catches a glimpse of Cassandra at the edge of the doorway he entered by. She hesitates a moment, then steps gingerly into the room. She is barefoot now, her shoes lost somewhere during the pursuit. Her dress has dried somewhat, but the filth from the sewers and the harbor floor remains, drying to a crust on her skin and hair as well as her clothing. She straightens up, looking around carefully until she spots Rick’s body. The urge to leap to his aid makes her twitch, but caution prevails and she remains by the doorway, eyes darting between Rick, Spider, the slaves and the pool.

The seawater begins to slop over the edge of the pool onto the floor and then Malcolm’s gigantic hands burst from the water and grasp the rim. Levering his enormous body free of the water’s grasp sends a wave of blackish water surging over the edge and out across the floor, and his feet splash in the shallow puddles that it leaves as he steps toward the throne.

He is naked, his monstrous form dripping as he steps over Rick’s limp form and settles into the throne. In the flickering light from the candles, his inhumanity is made even more grotesque by the shadows that chase themselves across his gargantuan frame. Malcolm folds his hands and rests them on the enormous belly that barely conceals the hideous malformation of his genitals, then leans forward. Looking down at Rick, he opens his fanged maw to speak but is interrupted by a faint keening from across the room.

Spider has been watching Malcolm’s entrance with a slight sneer at his theatricality, but the sound snaps his head around to see Cassandra stumbling backward toward the tunnel entrance. Her eyes are focussed on Malcolm, wide and panic-filled and her mouth is loose with shock. Spider doubts she is aware of the sound that emanates from it, a high whine of blind fear that crests into a shriek as she breaks and runs into the dark passageway. Spider stirs to follow, but subsides as Malcolm waves him back.

“It is not as if she can escape, after all,” he rumbles.

Malcolm returns his speculative gaze to Rick, whose eyes are squeezed tightly shut after taking one horrified look at Malcolm as he sat down. Spider notices that he has healed some of the horrific injuries left by Spider’s claws; enough to be able to move, should the need arise. It will take days, and much more blood, before he is fully restored. So young a vampire can only hold a small reserve of blood within him, not nearly enough to heal all of his wounds. He will be hungry now. Spider wonders if that will make him more or less difficult for Malcolm to manipulate.

“So, young one. Allow me to welcome you to Queensport. It appears you have been poorly educated, so let me remedy that failing. I am Malcolm. This city is mine. All of our kind who dwell here, do so solely at my command, with my permission. Do you-”

“Which-” Rick’s voice is rough with anger and strain. “-which one of you fuckers did this to me?” His eyes are open now, filled with bitter hate, as he pushes himself up off the floor.

Malcolm smiles. “A question we have been asking as well, young one. No one may Embrace a mortal without my permission in Queensport, yet you have been Embraced, and I know nothing of it. This displeases me. I would ordinarily extinguish that displeasure by destroying you, but then I would not be able to find your creator, which would displease me more.” His smile twists into a frown.

Rick is standing now, glowering up at Malcolm in preparation for another outburst. He opens his mouth and Malcolm lashes out with one massive arm, snatching him up into the air as he stands up. Standing on the dais, he dangles Rick nearly five feet off the floor and draws him close. Nose to nose, he snarls “Consider yourself fortunate, little thing, that my desire to find your maker exceeds my desire to expunge you from the world. This city is MINE, and I will brook no challenge to that authority! Not from unschooled fledglings like you, and even less from whatever suicidal fool created you! Contain yourself, answer my questions to my satisfaction, and you may depart this meeting with your life, such as it is. Test me, and I will slake my curiosity on your companions and use you to demonstrate the consequences of defiance to them, and to the rest of the city.”

He and Rick stare at each other, matching snarls. Finally, Rick lowers his eyes, and his snarl settles into a sullen frown. Grunting, Malcolm drops him and settles back onto his throne. Rick lands awkwardly, nearly falling forward onto the dais before catching himself. His shoulders slump, and he thrusts his hands into his pockets as he glares at Malcolm’s feet, waiting for the interrogation to continue.

Spider smiles wryly under the shadow of his hood. The boy is at least sane enough to recognize a direct threat, and controlled enough to keep his bestial nature from forcing a suicidal attack on so obviously superior a vampire. Not all of his predecessors have been so cautious. Spider’s smile fades as he considers how well Willem will react to this necessary establishment of hierarchy. He doubts it will end so well.

“So, young one. How did you come to the Change?”

“No fuckin’ clue. I woke up in a goddam cemetary, next to two folks I don’t know from fuckin’ Adam, and I’m fucking DEAD. We been running around the city, trying to find somebody who knows what’s what and figure out what happened to us and how to fix it, and we ain’t found shit. Your fuckin’ pet monster over there’s the first other walking corpse we’ve seen since we woke up. Cass says we’re vampires, and I think that’s GOTTA be bullshit, but we’re dead and we’re walking around, and we drink fucking BLOOD for fuck’s sake, so I got no clue what’s going on. So that’s what it is.”

Roused from his sulk, Rick shouts and gestures as he answers Malcolm’s question. For a moment, he seems to have forgotten who he speaks to, burning with fury and frustration, and then he catches himself and subsides. Malcolm watches the show impassively, but centuries of experience reveals his hidden amusement to Spider. Malcolm has always enjoyed watching the passion of the young.

A faint scratching sound from the tunnel catches Spider’s ear. Pulling his attention from the drama in front of the throne, he peers into the darkness, then sits up slightly. Cassandra has returned. She supports herself against the wall with one arm as she gingerly stumbles toward the throneroom, eyes squeezed shut, face tense with fear. He raises an eyebrow, impressed despite himself. To overcome the elder-fear so quickly shows more strength than he would expect from a fledgling of less than a moon’s age. Assuming, of course, that they are not lying.

“My ‘pet monster’, as you call him, is called Spider. He is my Hound to hunt my enemies, my strong right hand, and my well-loved kinsman. I would advise respect, but it seems that would be more than you are capable of. Instead, I will advise caution. He is impatient with the young.” Malcolm smiles. “As for the rest of it, yes. Yes, you are ‘vampires’. You are dead, and yet you walk the earth and drink the blood of the living. There are others of our kind here in Queensport, under my protection. Refugees, many of them, fleeing from political or social difficulties in other cities. I grant them safe harbor, protection from outsiders, and I resolve any difficulties that they may encounter between each other. In exchange, I ask only obedience to the three laws of the night, and obedience to my word.”

Cassandra has reached the entrance to the throneroom now, and slumps against the wall, just inside. Her eyes open slowly, carefully avoiding looking directly at Malcolm, glancing at Spider for a moment and drifting about the room before settling on Rick. Spider’s attention flicks back to Malcolm, but something nags at his mind.

“I see your friend has rejoined us. Come closer, little one.” Malcolm beckons to her gently. She steps forward, hesitant, and approaches the throne, still avoiding Malcolm’s eyes. Something is not right. Spider can see it in her eyes now, in the set of her shoulders. He leans forward, focusing on her as she slows and stops, halfway across the room. It is not just Malcolm’s gaze that she avoids. There is a section of the room where her eyes never travel, that she flinches away from. What is it?

He rolls forward into a crouch, legs tensed to spring, head slowly turning as he scans the room, a snarl shifting to an eager grin as he anticipates the slaughter to come. Someone else is here. Spider can feel him. That blur of forgetfulness and distraction, the soft whisper of ‘don’t see me, don’t see me’, he remembers it now. Willem has followed them here, clever fool that he is. The mental fog clears before his hunting will and he sees him, off to the side, disjointed grin, mad eyes and all. Spider’s arm snaps out, pointing directly at Willem as he growls “Malcolm. The worm is here as well.”

An almost comical look of dismay and irritation floods Willem’s face as he tenses to run. Malcolm snarls as he sits up, eyes following Spider’s direction to pierce Willem’s veil of concealment. Even Rick jerks in surprise as he turns to see his companion standing there, blurting “Willem-?” before catching himself and resuming his slumped posture of indifference. Cassandra merely squeezes her eyes shut and grimaces before shrugging, sighing and following everyone else’s gaze to the embarrassed Willem. His eyes dart about the room as his face twists into a mask of anger and he crouches, ready to spring for the door or for someone’s throat.

“Well, I suppose that simplifies matters,” harrumphs Malcolm. “If there are no further unexpected guests, perhaps we can get down to the core of the matter; your place in this city, the investigation of your origin, and your acceptance or rejection of the conditions of existence here in Queensport. Accept, and I will accept your allegiance. Reject, and Spider will escort you to the city limits and see you on your way.” He smiles. “Simple, yes?”

Cassandra is still refusing to look directly at Malcolm as she clears her throat and asks “These ‘laws of the night’ you spoke of. What are they?”

“At last a sensible question. They are laws that have been followed and enforced by our kind for millenia, primarily because they allow us to survive amidst the unknowing herd of mortality. In deference to your youth, I will phrase them in a less ...formal... style than they were given to me.”

“First: Keep Your Head Down. Do not reveal your nature to mortals. Family, friends, lovers; whoever they are. Do not leave exsanguinated bodies behind for mortals to find. If you must kill, find a way to disguise the nature of the kill, ideally in a manner that will arouse as little mortal attention as possible. Do not use your abilities in front of mortals, do nothing that will attract comment or question as to the nature of our existence. Remember, there are many more of them than there are of us, and they have the freedom of the day, where we are bound to the night alone.”

“Second: Keep It In Your Pants. Do not make other vampires without my permission. There are limits to how many of our kind the city can support with causing problems. We are predators, and predators do not function well in crowds. Granting the Embrace is an important and dangerous decision, one that requires maturity and judgement, not one to be given on a whim, or a momentary infatuation.

“Third: Keep Your Teeth To Yourself. Do not kill other vampires. Do not fight with other vampires. Most importantly, do not drink another vampire’s blood to the point of death. This is called Amaranth. It is our greatest crime. In many domains, those who commit it are put to the flame upon the instant of discovery.”

“Should you come into conflict with another vampire while in my city, contact one of my representatives or contact Spider. I will resolve the matter, and you will accept my decision. You may, of course, defend yourself if attacked, but be sure that any incidents will be fully investigated, and any attempt at deception will result in severe penalties.”

Spider’s attention is split between the three fledgelings now, Rick slumping sullenly before the throne, Willem still quivering with irritation and on the edge of flight, and Cassandra, now possessed of an icy calm but still unwilling to look at Malcolm directly. Instead, she looks at Spider. There is something in her eyes that he cannot identify, but he is too busy watching the three of them to worry about it now.

“Are there any other rules we should be aware of?” she asks quietly. Malcolm smiles. “A few. Minor things, really. Do not prey on city employees; policemen, public workers, that sort of thing. Many of them are my servants, and I would take it poorly. Also, Blue Mary’s club is off limits for hunting. She and I have an arrangement. Violate her hospitality and I will not protect you from her. Indeed, should you survive her attentions, there is no guarantee you will survive mine. Other than that-”

“And why the hell are we supposed to do what you say?” interrupts Willem. He has stopped jittering and now stands with his arms folded, sneering at Malcolm, head tilted to the side. Cassandra winces and Rick glances back at Willem before straightening slightly and looking back at Malcolm with a growing sneer of his own. Spider hisses quietly and slowly shifts his weight forward, preparing to leap.

Malcolm grimaces impatiently. “Well, if for no other reason than because I’ll kill you if you don’t. I’d hoped the logic behind our laws would be apparent, but if their rationale escapes you, then perhaps self-preservation will suffice.” He glares at Willem for a second and opens his mouth to speak again.

“If there-”

“Your gangling deathmonkey can’t be everywhere, fat boy.” Willem is smiling now, a mad grin that threatens to explode into laughter at any minute. Cassandra stares at him, shocked, and starts to step towards him but is brought up short as Rick snorts and says “Took him a week to find us, and we weren’t even hiding, man.”

“Rick, what the hell are you doing?” Cassandra hisses, looking back at him. “He’s not fucking kidding about killing us, you moron!”

“Fuck that noise, Cass! I coulda taken that freak out if I got the drop on him, and you know it.” Rick blusters, turning toward Cassandra and waving dismissively at Spider. Malcolm looks puzzled for a second and glances incredulously at Spider, who ignores the entire exchange. He is focused on Willem, now.

Willem watches the furor with barely concealed glee. His arms are wrapped around himself and he bounces on his toes like a child at a fire. Spider creeps forward a step, seeking a clear path past the fiercely bickering Cassandra and Rick.

“-fuck, man, he didn’t even know Willem was here ‘til just now! How the fuck are they gonna stop us?”

“Idiot, he just nearly killed you in seconds! What, you want him to complete the job? What’s your prob-”

Willem cuts in, skipping forward. “Cassie, Cassie, cutie Cassie, they can’t do anything we don’t let them. We’re immortal, now! They’re just an old fat freak and his pet monk-uurk!”

Spider has grown impatient with this crazed fledgeling and his megalomaniacal rantings. He leaps a dozen feet into the air, soaring over the cluster of shouting vampires and landing behind Willem, then snatches him into the air with one hand, choking off his interminable drivel. Standing at his full height, he towers over the other two, glaring down at them as he slowly squeezes Willem’s throat closed with a crunching gurgle.

Malcolm chuckles. “A certain amount of ...youthful exuberance is understandable. But this blatant defiance of both established authority and self-preservation raises serious questions about your fitness to survive, not only in Queensport, but in any other realm as well. It becomes obvious that it would be irresponsible for me to allow you children your freedom, even in exile. You would pose too great a threat of exposure to all of our kind. Fortunately, there are methods of ...ensuring your compliance.”

“Or, we could simply kill you all now.”

Both Cassandra and Rick step back from Spider, looking nervously at him as Willem struggles in his grasp. He sneers at them before returning his attentions to the writhing vampire who flails at him madly. The fiery hate in Willem’s eyes is familiar to Spider, a burning gaze he has known for centuries. He feels it in the back of his mind every night as he wakes; it follows him into the dark as he goes to sleep at dawn. The Beast in his heart is in the heart of every vampire. He smiles back at the snarling, snapping thing dangling from his hand, feeling the rage within him rise in response to greet it.

“Spider, that thing’s noise is becoming bothersome. Quiet it.” Malcolm’s amusement fades quickly. Spider smirks and grasps Willem’s right arm, close to the shoulder. Staring into the fledgeling’s frantic eyes, he waits for a second and then yanks sharply. A damp ripping sound combines with a soft crack as the arm tears free of Willem’s torso, dripping blackish-red Vitae as Spider brandishes it in front of Willem’s agonized face. Cassandra gasps in shock, and Rick lunges forward, halting only when she grabs his arm and pulls him back from the enormous vampire and his now quiet prey.

The madness in Willem’s eyes recedes, replaced by a colder hatred. Flinging the still-twitching arm into the black pool in the center of the room, Spider pulls Willem closer and hisses, “Prepared to listen now, little thing?” as the arm sinks into the dark water.

Willem smiles and then sticks out his tongue before biting down into it, chewing at his own flesh while continuing to grin. The coldness in his eyes deepens as he tears the last piece free and spits the wriggling gobbet of meat at Spider’s face. Spider snorts and says, “I’ll take that as a no,” before glancing back to Malcolm. Malcolm frowns and nods shortly.

Spider looks at Willem once more and shakes his head. This one is too far gone, too quickly. Reaching into his sweatshirt, he pulls out a sharpened wooden stake and stabs it through Willem’s chest with practiced ease. As the stake rips through his stiffened heart, Willem’s eyes go wide. Then they dull, and begin to dry, as does his face and skin, withering to a leathery grayish hue as the Vitae in his body withdraws from the surface. In seconds, he begins to resemble the corpse that he truly is. Spider smiles. This is a sight that he never tires of.

Behind him, Rick shouts “Oh, you BASTARD!”, pulls free of Cassandra’s grasp and lunges for him. Without bothering to look, Spider backhands him across the room. As he smacks into the wall with a crunch of breaking bone, Spider drops the desiccated body and turns to look at Malcolm with an impatient sneer. Malcolm meets his eyes and then grimaces and waves him on. The sneer turns to a savage grin as Spider leaps across the chamber again, landing with one foot on Rick’s chest as he tries to struggle to his feet.

“Stay down, fool.” Spider hisses.

Cassandra rolls her eyes and turns to Malcolm, facing him full on for the first time. Wiping a dried bit of mud from her cheek, she straightens her shoulders and says “What must we do to ‘ensure our compliance’, ...aaah, Lord? Boss? I’m not sure what I should call you.”

Malcolm smiles. “Malcolm. A title can be usurped. I hold Queensport by my own strength. I need no title to do so. Call me by my name. There is no other.” He looks at her speculatively.

“You killed him, you fuck!” shouts Rick, glaring up at Spider. Spider looks down at him, puzzled, and then smiles. “Ignorant child. The stake does not kill. It paralyses, and then brings the long sleep. Remove the stake and he wakes.”

Malcolm looks over and says, “Stand him up and bring him here, Spider. This must be said to both of them.” Spider’s smile sours, and he reaches down and grabs Rick by the throat, hissing into his face, “A politer tone, please. Malcolm is more patient than I, but his patience is not endless.” before hauling him to his feet and pushing him toward the throne. Rick stumbles and catches himself, shuffling over to stand next to Cassandra in front of the throne. Malcolm rests his enormous head in one hand and stares down at them, a wry smile on his broad dark face.

“It seems you are more ignorant than I had thought. Yes, your friend sleeps now, bound until the stake is removed. It will be some time before that happens, however. His mind is damaged, and he most evidently cannot be trusted with his freedom. My servants will place him in a safe place here in my home, and I will think on ways to try and restore his sanity. I suspect a strong part of that will require subjecting him to the bond of blood; the Vinculum, as the traditionalists call it. Our blood is addictive, you see. In addition, it binds the drinker to the source with mental and emotional chains of forced affection and subservience. There are those of our kind who bind only mortals in this way, and there are others who enforce their will on other kindred through these methods.”

He looks sternly at Rick. “Ordinarily, I choose other methods of control, but for those rebellious souls who cannot be exiled, who refuse obedience, and who I choose not to kill, there is little other option. You, I’m afraid, fall into that category.” Rick looks nervously up at him, arms tightly crossed as if he was cold, lips set in an angry pout.

“The bond comes in stages. One drink, and you view your source as a friend, one you care for and do not desire to harm or inconvenience. Two drinks, and that forced friendship grows stronger, becoming nearly love. It becomes very difficult to resist their will, or to act against them in any way. Both of these bonds will fade, with time.”

Spider has taken a position beside the throne, crouched on the floor, carefully studying the two fledgelings as Malcolm explains their fate. When he describes the consequences of drinking vampire blood, Spider notices both Cassandra and Rick flinch and glance quickly at one another. He smiles to himself. It seems they have been experimenting.

“It is the third drink that is the final bond, the true Vinculum. With the third taste of your regent’s blood, you become their slave. The love you bear them becomes overwhelming, and it becomes impossible to act against them, or resist them in anything. This bond does not fade with time; it is as eternal as we are. Only with the final death of the regent does it pass, and not always then. There are tales of slaves continuing to serve dead masters for centuries afterward, toiling endlessly to satisfy the imagined whims of creatures now dust.”

Spider hears the shadow in Malcolm’s voice, and he snarls in sympathy. They and their kin are the truth within that tale. Both he and Malcolm are convinced that the Master is long dead by now. It has been more than a century since he vanished into the depths of the Labyrinth. He could be sleeping, but he had always claimed that his sorcery kept him from the need for the centuries long sleeps that claim the elders of their kind, and no-one in the family has ever remembered him sinking into that deep slumber in the more than four centuries that they have served him. Still, they all feel that chain about their necks, the pull to serve the Master’s desires, to fulfill the commands he left them with as best they can. Even the unChanged feel it, a shadow on their hearts that keeps them from running from the family’s endless obligations and twisted rules. He and Malcolm feel it strongest, as the only remaining Ascended. It is why he runs above the city, whenever he can. His chains are lighter there, in the darkness above the mortal world.

“It is a harsh fate, that. I will not demand so final a sacrifice from you. But your actions here have proved that you cannot be set free without compulsion, and so before you leave my presence, Rick, you will drink from me twice. Then we will see whether you will stay here in my city, or leave, never to return.”

Rick’s face contorts in helpless rage, glaring up at Malcolm. For a moment he looks as though he’s about to leap for his throat but Cassandra grabs his arm and pulls him close, whispering into his ear, “Keep it together, Rick! He’s not joking about killing you! Let me talk to him and see what I can do.” Rick pulls free of her hand, but subsides, grumbling to himself as she approaches the throne.

Looking up at him, she hesitates, and then bows slightly. “Ah, M-Malcolm? May I speak to you?” Malcolm nods, a small smile crossing his face. “Am I correct in assuming that you will not require me to drink from you?”

Malcolm’s smile widens. “Child, you alone seem capable of controlling yourself in stressful situations. Had your companions a fraction of your presence of mind, this distasteful arrangement would be entirely unneeded. No, I will not require such a pledge from you.” He narrows his eyes and tilts his head to the side. “Why do you ask?”

Cassandra looks back at Rick, silently fuming as he stares at Malcolm. “He is more than a companion. He’s a friend. Maybe the only one I have, now. He’s just having trouble adjusting to his new life.” She turns back to Malcolm. “Me, I didn’t have that much of a life before this; just work and school, really. Guess I didn’t have as much to let go of.” She stops, looking older than her years.

“If I drink from you, offer myself as a-, a pledge for his good behavior, will you let him free? I think I mean enough to him to keep him from losing his grip, and I don’t think he’s going to adjust well to being, well, enslaved.” She smiles grimly. “Me, it’s not that big a deal. Not like it’d be the first time.”

Spider watches Rick’s face drop as he begins to understand Cassandra’s offer. “What? Fuck no, Cass! This is my fuckup! You can’t take the heat for me!” He grabs her by the shoulder, pulling her around to face him. “No! I won’t let you do this, dammit!” Looking up at Malcolm, he opens his mouth to yell and then stops, whispering, “Please, you can’t let her do this.”

Spider finds himself fascinated by her face as she looks at Rick. The mix of pity, irritation and affection; it is rare for him to be so close to such nuanced emotion. Much of what he witnesses is the crude operatics of street drama; anger, lust, hatred. Or perhaps it is simply that he sees it from too far away? There are subtleties here, even in the clownish Rick, that he might have missed from above, hiding in the shadows.

Another thought strikes him as he watches them. Is it he who has changed? Has he grown attached to these young things in the short time he has followed them? He is unsure of how he feels about that.

Malcolm is silent for several minutes, chin resting in his elongated hand as he watches the two fledgelings. Then, he smiles again, eyes gleaming with a strange pleasure. “So, you see, young thing, your sins rest not only on yourself, but burden your friends as well. We are none of us truly free, in the end.” The smile drops away, and he extends one hand toward Cassandra, beckoning her to the base of the throne, past the importunate Rick. “Your proposal is acceptable, little one, in part. Both of you shall drink, but only once. Then we shall discuss your future, whether you remain here or travel elsewhere. Come and drink, child.”

She steps forward without hesitation, climbing onto the dais and setting her small hand in his enormous palm. Malcolm nods to her, motioning towards his wrist, nearly as wide as her waist. She kneels, cradling his giant forelimb in her arms and then bites down, fangs extending and slicing through the dark skin and into the dead flesh beneath. The enthralling scent of vitae fills the chamber as she drinks, thick crimson dripping from her chin. The misery on Rick’s face fades as the smell hits him, replaced with a hungry eagerness, followed quickly by bitter self-loathing.

A minute passes as she suckles, and then Malcolm reaches down and pulls her head away from his arm. She struggles for a second, whining at the back of her throat as she tries to keep drinking before catching herself. Her glazed eyes clear, and the blood-fever passes. Malcolm pats her head gently as she collects herself, wiping at the blood on her chin and absently licking her fingers clean. Stepping down from the dais, she doesn’t seem to notice Rick’s face contorted in sullen anger as he looks at her, still drifting in the warm afterglow.

“And now you, my quarrelsome wolf. Come.”

Rick mounts the dais reluctantly, refusing to look Malcolm in the eyes as he approaches. The smell of vitae is still strong, rich red liquid dripping slowly from the still-open wound. Spider watches the struggle in Rick’s face, revulsion warring with need and duty as he slowly grasps the blood streaked hand and lowers his mouth to the wounded wrist.

A moment passes and Rick relaxes into the ecstasy of the drink. Cassandra stares up at him, eyes gleaming with envy and sadness. Finally, Malcolm pulls him free. Rick strains against his grasp like a dog pulling at a chain, growling at the back of his throat as the torn flesh ripples and reknits itself, closing in seconds. A faint scent of the blood lingers in the air, and Rick savors it, eyes closed and head thrown back, licking the last drops of it from his lips. Then he snarls and steps back, stiff-legged and angry, still. Cassandra reaches out and brushes his shoulder with one hand, and he takes a deep breath and relaxes, reaching up to pat her hand.

“And now, children, comes the real business. You, Cassandra. You corroborate your bold companion’s version of your origins? Awakening in the cemetary, Embraced unknowingly and abandoned by your makers?”

She nods. “We woke up a week or so ago. I think, around midnight, the three of us. In the center of St. Helena’s Cemetery. We didn’t know what was going on, or what had happened to us. I didn’t even know what day it was! None of us knew each other, really. I’ve seen Rick before, at a show, but that was it. We didn’t know what was happening, but there was a couple in the cemetery, in a car a little way away from us, and I could smell their blood, and I was so hungry! Rick and Willem were feeling it too, I could see it.”

“We snuck up on them, it was like instinct or something. Part of me knew what to do, and I just let that part do the driving. We just rushed them, grabbed them and dragged them out of the car and started drinking. I was so HUNGRY. I’ve never been that hungry in my life, but we were drinking and they were fighting and then they stopped, ...and then they were dead. We didn’t mean to kill them. It was just, ...I don’t know, it just happened.”

Spider can see there is more there, something else that she is not saying. She shows little guilt over the deaths, more embarrassment, really, but there is something more. His eyes narrow as he watches her more closely.

“So, we put the bodies in the trunk and drove away. We found a place out of town to hide the bodies, and then Rick, um, acquired a car and we came back. Then we found out it was a week later. The last things any of us remembered were from a week before we woke up in the cemetery. I don’t know, maybe that’s how long the change, the ...Embrace takes?” She looks up at Malcolm questioningly.

Malcolm frowns. “At most, the Change takes a night. More often, a few minutes to an hour. You have no memories of that week? No memories of being taken, of being bitten?”

“No, nothing. All the people I talked to said that I vanished two weeks ago. I remember leaving school on Friday, heading to my car... and then nothing. My car got towed from the school lot that weekend, so whatever happened, it happened there in the parking lot.”

The frown deepens. “And you, young wolf? What do you remember?”

Rick frowns in return. “Same shit. Friday night, out drinkin’, thinkin’ about snagging a car later for Shorty to cut up, thinkin’ about this hottie in this ragged Megadeth tee other side of the bar, and then poof! I’m in a fucking cemetery, and I’m fucking dead.”

“And your unfortunate friend?”

“He said the same thing. He’s out on the town Friday and he wakes up with usa week later. Nothing. Nobody sees anything, nobody knows shit. Just... lights out.”

“And nothing else?”

Rick and Cassandra look at each other. “Well-” “Yeah, there’s-” They smile at each other, and Rick waves her on. She looks down at her chest and wipes some of the muck off, pulling the neck of her dress down without embarrassment. On the upper curve of her left breast there is a black tattoo. Malcolm and Spider lean forward as one. The tattoo is of three intertwined dragon heads, each gnawing on the neck of the next in a triple knot ofendless hunger, about the size of a half dollar. Spider does not recognize it, and from his look of puzzlement, neither does Malcolm.

“I got one too,” proclaims Rick, “and so does Willem. Same thing, same place. No fucking clue what it is or where I got it.” He chuckles. “Not the first time I woke up with new ink and no clue how, but if we all got it, then whoever grabbed us musta put it on.” He looks down at his chest and raises an appraising eyebrow. “Not a bad piece of work, actually.”

Malcolm leans back, thinking. His eyes narrow and he turns to Spider, voice cold with anger. “Do you suppose our other guests might shed some light on this new development?” Spider snarls. His thoughts had run in a similar direction. The cursed Dragons and their never-ending plots. Perhaps now Malcolm will allow him to kill them.

“Well, before we consult them, another matter must be attended to. Given your regrettable lack of knowledge concerning the nature of your condition, I take it you know nothing of the clans, the five breeds of our kind?” Both Cassandra and Rick look blankly at each other and then at him, shaking their heads. “I thought not.”

“Ah. A brief lesson then, in kindred taxonomy. There are five main breeds of vampire. Our blood is passed to us from our sires, and we are reborn into their clan when we awaken into undeath. With experience, you will grow to be able to recognize the clans by their behavior in most cases, but the surest test is in the taste of the blood.”

“Spider and I are kin to the clan most often called the Nosferatu, the Haunts. We are the hidden monsters of our kind. Remember the taste of my blood, and when you find that hint of rot and fear in another’s blood, know you are tasting our clan. Now come, and share yours with me. At the very least, it will help us find your sire, or sires.”

Cassandra and Rick look at each other nervously, and then she squares her shoulders and steps forward, right arm extended toward Malcolm. He takes it gently in one handand bends down, delicately nicking her wrist with his fangs and lapping a few drops before licking the wound closed. Leaning back with a contemplative expression, he nods. “Not a surprise, that. You, child, are sprung from the clan of the Daeva. Seducers and sensualists, prone to excess in debauchery. Two of your clan reside in the city, but there are several others nearby, which will complicate matters.”

“Three,” Spider growls. “One of our new guests is also Daeva.”

Malcolm narrows his eyes. “Are you certain?”

“He has the smell.”

“Hmh.” Malcolm folds his hands and rests his chin on them, lost in thought. Cassandra has stepped back, rubbing her wrist idly as she recovers from the too-brief bliss of the bite. Rick inhales deeply, out of mortal habit, and steps up onto the dais. Pushing up the sleeve of his leather jacket, he thrusts his arm toward Malcolm defiantly.

Malcolm jerks slightly as he rouses from his musing, taking Rick’s arm and perfunctorily nipping at his wrist. Licking up the brief swell of blood, he looks puzzled for a moment. Turning to Spider, he says “Gangrel. Were any of them...?”

Spider knits his brow. “No. The leader is Ventrue, a lord to the bone. The youngest is also Daeva, by her carriage. Not the other one’s progeny, though. They did not have the look.”

“Whatever, man!” Rick jerks his arm back, grimacing. “What’s this Gangrel shit mean? What’s my, like, blood fortune, or whatever?”

Malcolm looks at him wryly. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. I should have known. The Gangrel are warriors, beasts and shapechangers. Among other traits, they are known for difficulty with self-control and a tendency toward, shall we say, anti-intellectualism.”

“What?” Rick looks puzzled.

“He means they act like jackasses a lot, Rick.” Cassandra smirks, elbowing him in the side.

“Hey, fuck you, Cass.” Rick shoulders her aside, looking back up at Malcolm. “You said warriors, right? So, what, Gangrels are tough, right? Coz, I’m all over that shit.”

“Yes, little wolf. You need have no fear on that score. But this complicates matters. There are no Gangrel within the city itself. One holds Pentucket nearby under my aegis, and several more reside north of us in the forests of New Hampshire, but none within the city proper. Hmph.” Malcolm’s attention drifts off again.

“Um, what other kinds are there?” Cassandra asks, brushing more of the drying muck from her shoulders.

Malcolm rouses again. “Ventrue, one of whom you will meet shortly. Called the Lords, they are masters of men and beasts, with a tendency to go mad as eternity drags on. And there are the Mekhet, the Shadows. Wise and stealthy, but very, ah, flammable.” He looks at Spider again. “I have an idea.”

Looking at Rick and Cassandra, he smiles. “So, young ones. Tell me. Do you desire to remain in Queensport, under my authority and protection, or do you wish to leave my domain and seek your fortunes in other realms? Before you choose, you should be made aware that hunting here is far less rigidly administered than in many nearby cities. We have only custom and habit to define who may hunt in what areas of the city; other rulers take a far more proactive role in enforcing territorial boundaries, and as neonates and outsiders, you will likely find yourselves restricted to less congenial hunting grounds than you’d prefer. Still, the choice is yours.”

Cassandra and Rick look at each other nervously. She clears her throat and steps forward. “Uh, if we decide to stay, do we have to stay forever, or can we change our minds later?”

Malcolm chuckles. “Of course you may leave if you wish. This is no prison, child. This is a place of refuge, where those pursued by greater forces may find shelter, where the hopeless may rest easily. While I would appreciate some notification should you decide to depart, that is simply to alleviate any concerns over your absence. I do pride myself on keeping aware of my charges and their concerns.”

Spider snorts quietly. He has never been certain how much Malcolm believes this rhetoric of shelter and protection for wanderers and refugees, and how much is simple inertia. Their Master had begun accepting refugees into his domain centuries ago and protecting them from pursuers, but Spider has always believed that this was an act. Most likely some byzantine scheme to conceal the entry and exit of his agents among the constant flow of wanderers seeking refuge from nearby political conflicts. The notion that the Master could be motivated by altruism of any kind makes Spider want to kill something.

Currently, the city is only sparsely populated. It’s been some decades since there was enough nearby turmoil to spur a flood of vampires fleeing political change, and most of the city’s inhabitants are those too wounded, disliked, or lazy to move on to other, more active realms. There is something about the city that stifles, dragging at the spirit. Few vampires remain here long, but it has served for centuries as a resting place, to heal and regroup.

Cassandra nods. “Can we, uh, talk it over a bit? Before we choose?”

“Of course. Please do.” As she and Rick huddle halfway across the room, Malcolm glances over at Spider, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. Spider grimaces, shrugging noncommittally. It is obvious to him that Malcolm has some larger scheme growing and sees these juvenile pawns as potentially useful. Spider still suspects the Dragons of some involvement in the neonates’ creation, but he is aware that much of that suspicion may be simple prejudice on his part. He does not care.

The fledglings’ whispered conversation is as clear to Spider’s ears as though they were shouting. Rick still insists that they need nothing from Malcolm and mulishly maintains that both of them can easily make their way elsewhere and thrive, but gradually he succumbs to Cassandra’s arguments. Spider suspects the strongest one was her insistence that only here can they discover who made them and get revenge.

“We, uh, we accept your protection and authority while we stay in Queensport,” and she elbows Rick into silence, “and ask for your assistance in finding our creators.” Rick grumbles something vaguely conciliatory and continues to sulk as Cassandra bows gracefully.

“Very well, then. Of course you will have our assistance, my dear. We’ve just as much an interest in discovering these miscreants as you, after all. Now, it occurs to me that you both are in particular need of some basic education in the necessities of our existence, the sort of education that a responsible sire would have provided you. As it happens, I may have a solution for you.” Malcolm looks pleased with himself.

Turning to the alcove, Malcolm calls, “Daniel! Attend us, please.” A tall figure steps into the chamber, clad in a dark gray caftan. His bare feet are silent against the stone floor as he glides over to Malcolm’s side, hands folded before him, calm smile never moving. Daniel has always been an imperturbable shadow at Malcolm’s elbow, even as a child, more than a century ago. Spider sometimes envies him that calmness.

“Daniel, bring our other guests out, and have our unfortunate friend over by the wall removed and placed in a secure chamber.” Daniel nods and glides away. Seconds later, two family members in security uniforms emerge and pick up Willem’s torpid form, hefting him over their shoulders and carrying him out. Rick frowns and stirs, as if to follow, but Cassandra hisses shortly and he settles, grumbling.

A few minutes pass, and Daniel returns, leading three figures into the room before bowing slightly and returning to the alcove. The three pause just outside the doorway before striding confidently toward the throne. Leading the way is Renault, a well dressed vampire appearing no more than his mid thirties, with a slightly antiquated mustache and a sardonic quirk to his mouth. Behind him is the man Spider spoke to in the park beside the hotel, if possible, looking even stiffer and more controlled, scanning the room for threats with cold eyes. At the rear is a young-looking woman, clutching a leather satchel stuffed full of papers to her chest. Her pale skin is accentuated by careful makeup, dyed black hair and an elaborate black dress combining lace, leather straps and silk. It looks as if it has never been worn before.

Renault stops ten feet from the throne and bows elegantly. “Dread Malcolm, my thanks for your patience with us and our small project, and for your permission to begin its initial stages. Allow me to introduce my student, the Scholar Mitchell, and our apprentice, the Supplicant WyrmsChild.” His followers, standing behind him, bow shortly as they are introduced. Cassandra looks at them with open curiosity, but Rick glowers, folding his arms and sneering as the three Dragons make their introductions.

Spider watches Mitchell closely. He appears unarmed, his barely used suit fitting too closely to allow much concealment. He divides his attentions between Spider and Rick, dismissing Cassandra as a direct threat. Spider suspects that may be a mistake.

“So, Master Renault. I take it you have completed your initial survey?”

“Completed? No, no. We have barely begun to lay the groundwork for an initial survey. The etheric flows vary with the seasons, and a week is far too short a time to make any sort of comprehensive overall analysis, Dread Malcolm. I and my students have only begun to establish initial readings, some superficial charting of the currents of etheric energies and the beginning stages of a more indepth survey of your city’s fascinating history and design. All these are needed for even the most general analysis of your city’s energetic structure, to say nothing of the time required for any sort of predictive geomantic prognostication.”

Malcolm frowns. “And how long would such an analysis take you and your comrades?”

“Oh, an exhaustive survey could take decades, potentially. But given a year or so, we could accumulate enough reliable data to analyze for you and make some useful predictions. Areas for investment, energetic sites that attract problematic phenomena and entities, that sort of thing. All quite useful for a lord of your evident wisdom and foresight.”

“A year, you ask for now. At first it was ‘Give me a week, Dread Malcolm, and I’ll give you a view of your city you’ve never had before’ and now you say it’ll be a year before your Dragon auguries show any fruit? I suspect charlatanry, Master Renault. Have you nothing to show me?”

Renault smiles broadly. “Well, one has to try. In all honesty, there appear to be complicating factors that are affecting our ability to acquire reliable readings. Whether these factors are temporary conditions or permanent features of Queensport’s geomantic pattern, we have yet to determine. If the latter holds true, which I begin to believe it might, then I will have to substantially restructure our survey techniques. Which, as I’ve said, will take some time.” He smooths his mustache with one knuckle.

“Nevertheless, we have made some small progress.” Renault waves WyrmsChild toward him, taking the satchel from her and kneeling to open it. He removes several large maps, heavily annotated and scrawled on, and begins to unfold them as he steps toward the throne.

Spreading one out on the dais at Malcolm’s feet, Renault squats down beside it, pointing to one section that features a great many indecipherable scribbles. “You see this section, and these others, similarly noted? The etheric flows here seem to vanish almost entirely, the charged energies dissipating into nothing, sinking into the landscape in a fashion I’ve never seen before.” His diplomatic poise begins to dissolve into a scholar’s enthusiasm as he continues.

“The city-wide currents appear to have altered themselves in reaction to this, albeit feebly. You see here, these arrows? They delineate measured flows of etheric energies, the major currents that course through the land connecting all places. Here, they’re faded, weaker than anyplace I’ve seen that’s still occupied by living humans. More like trickles in a desert than the rivers of power that they should be. Now, I’ve…”

Spider drifts away from the conversation. Malcolm seems fascinated, possibly as much by Renault’s enthusiasm as by the actual subject, but Spider has less than no interest in such things. The Dragons’ claims to secret knowledge and occult mastery mean nothing to him; he has encountered few things that his claws and fangs could not touch in his long unlife. Those few that he was unable to directly combat have always yielded to his unflinching willingness to destroy their servants, tools, and when necessary, their victims. All else is simply inconsequential gabble, excuses made by bored immortals to manipulate each other by pretense to hidden wisdom. He has never met a sorcerer whose spells could match his own fury, other than the Master.

His drifting attention settles on Cassandra, who seems as absorbed in Renault’s presentation as Malcolm is. She tiptoes forward, sneaking glances at the map, as behind her, Rick rolls his eyes and slumps into a caricature of bored adolescence.

Cassandra’s rapt attention intrigues him. He would not have thought she would find such dry esoterica of interest, from the little he knows of her. But she seems to follow the conversation easily enough; far more, he suspects, than he could. There is more to her than the practical college girl or the streetwise dancer. She has adapted to the night as if born to it; even Malcolm’s terrible aura seems to slide off her now as she fearlessly eavesdrops on his interrogation of Renault.

That conversation seems to be going well enough. Renault continues to pile more maps and papers before Malcolm’s throne, feverishly gesturing as he lectures on the potential significance of some arcane fluctuation in some measurement or other. Malcolm continues to listen, interrupting occasionally with a question, his irritation with Renault’s flattery and temporizing replaced with an apparently genuine interest in his presentation. Spider is slightly depressed. It seems unlikely that Malcolm will allow him to kill them, now.

He slumps back against the wall, picking at a rough spot on the floor with one finger as he watches them. As he watches her. He cannot stop watching her. Her keen eyes, her slight smile... He wonders where she acquired the scars on the inside of her wrists. He wonders what she looks like when she dances. He wonders why he cares about these things.

She has noticed his stare and returns it, still smiling. She does not flinch from his gaze,even as he narrows his eyes into his familiar glower, his face twisting into a sneer that feels as comfortable as the shadows he loves so well. She breaks the stare only to size the rest of him up, smiling wider as she appraises his inhuman frame, shrouded in slowly drying denim and terrycloth, before meeting his eyes once more. There is no fear in her eyes.

Caught in her gaze, his sneer slowly fades. Where does he know her from? Why does she not fear him? It cannot be simple ignorance; she has seen what he is capable of. His monstrous form holds no horror for her, despite her youth. Is she mad?

Why doesn’t she know him?

The change in Malcolm’s voice jolts him from his reverie. Renault is standing again, his maps and papers neatly rolled and tucked under his arm. Malcolm is sitting up, looking at him speculatively. Cassandra grins at Spider and returns her attention to the dais, as does he.

“Well, Master Renault, you make a reasonable case, and your findings are certainly intriguing. But are they enough to set aside our past difficulties with your order and allow you to set up a chapter here? As it happens, we have a small problem that, should you be willing to assist us with it, would go far in demonstrating your worthiness as new residents and in assuaging any lingering doubts we might have about you and your order.”

Renault smiles and bows. “Of course, Dread Malcolm. We would be more than happy to assist you in whatever capacity you require.” Malcolm smiles wryly.

“You may yet come to regret your eagerness.” He points to Rick and Cassandra, who straighten up and look back at him curiously. “These fledglings have been Embraced and abandoned by unknown miscreants. They know little or nothing about the nature of their new existences, and are in dire need of mature guidance. While we search for their reprobate sires, it would be a great relief to us for you to take on the responsibility of teaching them the things they must know in order to survive without endangering the rest of us, or themselves.”

Renault arches an eyebrow and turns to look at the two neonates. Sizing them up, he nods politely to them and turns back to Malcolm.

“Of course, we’d be more than willing to educate them. You have only to ask.”

“You may find that it’s not as simple as you expect, Dragon. They’re... a bit independent. Some delicacy and patience will doubtless be needed.”

Renault smiles broadly. “Certainly, Dread Malcolm. We endeavor to please, and education is a fundamental aspect of our function as a order.”

Malcolm’s chuckle is a thunderous rumble that continues long enough for Renault’s confident smile to waver slightly. Rick frowns, vaguely offended, but Cassandra grins ruefully at Spider before walking over to Renault and introducing herself. Rick follows, still frowning.

Spider sends Malcolm a questioning look, but the gigantic figure waves him off, watching the introductions carefully. Spider snarls and slumps back against the wall, pulling his hood over his head and picking at his thumbnail morosely. No, he will not be allowed to kill the Dragons. How irritating.

Introductions finished, Renault looks at Malcolm. “Then we are agreed? We may establish a small chapter of our order here, in submission to your rule, and begin our deeper investigations?”

“Yes, clever one. In exchange for your assistance with these fledglings’ instruction, and whatever help you may be able to offer in identifying their sires. I’m told your studies of our condition may be of some use in that area.”

“They may be, yes. Our most profound thanks are yours, Dread Malcolm. You will not regret this decision.” He bows again.

Malcolm looks sternly at Rick and Cassandra. “I would be infinitely comforted if you were to extend Master Renault as much cooperative effort as you can muster, children. There is much you must learn, and he is nothing if not a font of knowledge. Make wise use of that knowledge, and you may yet find the answers you and I seek. Go now, and remember. We will be watching you.”

Daniel re-emerges and ushers Renault, his students and the two young vampires out of the room. As they leave, Cassandra looks back, catching Spider’s eye with a puzzled expression on her face. He nods almost imperceptibly, and she smiles, following the others into the tunnels.

Malcolm sits silently, massive head resting on his fist, staring speculatively at the empty passageway for several minutes. Finally, Spider stands and walks to the edge of the black pool in the center of the room. Looking down into the rippling darkness, he says sullenly “And if this is a Dragon plot?”

Malcolm sighs. “If it is a Dragon plot, then they are infinitely more subtle and convoluted in their conniving than my simple mind can encompass. Nevertheless, we will watch them and see what they do. To kill them now would conceal too much, however much it might ease your mind.”

Spider snarls and strides toward the tunnels.

 


	5. Coda

It is hours later. Hours of running and leaping from roof to roof, watching the humans below mill about like insects, slaking his thirst on alley-wandering drunkards; all the things that once let him feel free. They do nothing now. He still feels that itch in his head. Something is holding him, binding him, a thread of connection so light that he cannot touch it, but he feels it nonetheless.

He is crouched on the roof of an apartment building, on the other side of Bartlett St. He has been there for nearly an hour when her car pulls up and parks. She and Rick are in the front seat for several minutes before emerging, but they do not look like they’re talking. Just sitting in the darkness, just like him.

They do not talk on their way into her apartment building, climbing the front steps side by side. They barely look at one another. That spark of life that held his eyes, that youthful joy that once made them bicker and laugh seems snuffed now by the shadow of their new world. Or is it simply the fate of their friend that weighs on them? Spider is bemused by the realization that he misses that irritating chatter. It has been a long time since he found himself so entangled in the life of his prey.

As Cassandra enters, she pauses, looking back and up at the skyline. An oddly wistful look crosses her face before she turns to enter the darkened hall. On an impulse, Spider scrapes a fingernail against the chimney he hides behind. In the silence, the faint scritch carries on the damp night air. She pauses, and then lifts her head, shoulders relaxing as she goes inside.

He watches her building for some time, thinking.

 

\-------------

 

The sun is nearly up as he enters his chamber in the Labyrinth. The distant itch has grown stronger, drowning out the hiss of advancing daylight and the pull of sleep. He stands in the center of the larger room, looking at the partially finished masks, hands clasped behind his head. No, he will need a fresh block for this; none of them are right. Perhaps they will be right later, for something else.

He pulls his sweatshirt over his head and flings it towards the couch. Snatching up a rough-sawn wooden block, he tilts it and turns it, poking at the knots and corners speculatively. Yes, this will do. He sits on the floor and reaches for a large chisel, and then begins chipping at the edge of the block. He does not think he will have to break this one when it is done.

Several hours pass before he realizes he is smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we leave it, for now. I wrote this as an exploration of Spider's view of the beginning events of the campaign, as he became more central to Cassandra's character development. Writing it all down helped me get a better sense of how to run him in game, and opened up some other ideas that later turned into other works. I've thought about writing up later events from his perspective, but it's been so many years since the campaign ended, I'm not sure if I can do him justice anymore.


End file.
